Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Faith, Government, Polls, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: 2008, Al Franken, Congress, Democrats, John Cornyn, Judaism, Matt Brooks, Minnesota, National Republican Senatorial Committee, Norm Coleman, NRSC, Republican Jewish Coalition, Republicans
Former Senator Norm Coleman has found himself a new job:
Last session’s senior senator from Minnesota Norm Coleman, still battling Al Franken to be seated in the Senate, has taken a paid job as a consultant to the Republican Jewish Coalition, which harshly attacked Obama last fall, its executive director, Matt Brooks, said.
Coleman will join the group as a “consultant and strategic advisor,” and will also travel the country fundraising on the group’s behalf, Brooks said.
“It’s an opportunity for him to, now that he’s got some down time on his hands, to really help us while this case is being adjudicated,” Brooks said. “He hasn’t given up at all” on retaking the Minnesota seat.
That’s not the behavior of a candidate who won his last election; it’s the behavior of a candidate who packed up his office and is moving on.
Coleman knows he lost, that much is obvious. The question is, how long will it take him to officially give up the ghost? Now that he has endeared himself to the Republican establishment by keeping Al Franken out of the Senate–landing himself a nice right-wing welfare job in the process–how long will he keep the charade up? When will he finally let the people of Minnesota enjoy their right to full representation in the Senate?
I can’t imagine the people of Minnesota are too happy that their former Senator won’t let their duly-elected representative take office. And I can’t imagine the people of Minnesota will be very forgiving to the Republican Party in the future after this gambit is all said and done.
UPDATE: More from Nate Silver:
But what is Coleman’s angle here? Increasingly, I think this is being driven by John Cornyn and the [NRSC], and that they’ve given up on beating Franken but merely want to bloody him, casting doubt over the legitimacy of his election in order to make him a focal point for Republican angst. If this were a generic Democrat instead of Franken, in other words, I think the Republicans might already have given up. But because Franken has the potential to be a polarizing figure, there is more incentive for them to fan the flames a little bit; the recount merely provides the pretense for them to do so.
Filed under: Faith, Government, International, Iraq, Terrorism | Tags: Egypt, Extremism, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Islamic Extremism, Jordan, Military, Pakistan, Radicalism, Saudi Arabia
Tell me again how we’re winning the war on terror:
Across the Middle East, young people like Mr. Fawaz, angry, alienated and deprived of opportunity, have accepted Islam as an agent of change and rebellion. It is their rock ’n’ roll, their long hair and love beads. Through Islam, they defy the status quo and challenge governments seen as corrupt and incompetent.
These young people — 60 percent of those in the region are under 25 — are propelling a worldwide Islamic revival, driven by a thirst for political change and social justice. That fervor has popularized a more conservative interpretation of the faith.
[...]
The long-term implications of this are likely to complicate American foreign policy calculations, making it more costly to continue supporting governments that do not let secular or moderate religious political movements take root.
Washington will also be likely to find it harder to maintain the policy of shunning leaders of groups like the Brotherhood in Egypt, or Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, which command tremendous public sympathy.
[...]
Indeed, as Islamist movements have swelled, governments across the Middle East have chosen both to contain and to embrace them. Many governments have aggressively moved to roll back the few democratic practices that had started to take root in their societies, and to prevent Islamists from winning power through the voting booth. That risks driving the leaders and the followers of Islamic organizations toward extremism.
At the same time, many governments have tried to appease popular Islamist fervor. Jordan recently granted a Muslim Brotherhood-aligned newspaper the right to publish daily instead of weekly; held private talks with Hamas leaders; arrested a poet, saying he had insulted Islam by using verses of the Koran in love poems; and shut down restaurants that had served alcohol during Ramadan, though they had been licensed by the state to do so.
[Emphasis mine]
We could do a lot of good fostering democracy and moderation in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, right now our policies in the Middle East are self-defeating. Sometimes we’re fighting young Muslims (like in Iraq), other times we’re ignoring them completely (like in Iran) or we’re propping up the corrupt governments they’re fighting against (like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, among others). All of these undermine the credibility of the western world–and western values–and leave radical Islam as one of the only means of social reform.
Conservatives love to mock liberals for wanting to address the root causes of terrorism. Look, radicals who plot or try to carry out terrorist attacks should be captured and brought to justice, if not outright killed. But at some point, all of those radicals made a choice to follow radical Islam. They make a decision that radicalism was the only remedy to their problems.
If we eliminated the problems that drive people away from democracy and moderation and toward Islamic extremism, we would have to worry about far fewer terrorists down the road.
We need more than a strong military to defeat radical Islam. Not every problem is a nail, so we should have more tools than just a hammer. In light of the massive demographic shifts in the Middle East, we should be looking toward where these young Muslims are headed and what we can do to steer them in the right direction, lest we lose them to extremism forever.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Faith, Governors, Senate | Tags: 2008, Faith, McCain-Palin, Republicans
For decades, the Republican Party has been sustained by an alliance between business conservatives and social conservatives. The former have provided funding and ideas while the latter have provided the manpower and votes.
Recently, though, the alliance has become strained. The Republican Party has always been the party of big business—whenever the Republicans took power, the corporate cons got their way first. And even though the social conservatives labored for years to elect Republicans, they ended up with little to show for it—gay marriage is legal in three states, civil unions are expanding, abortion is still legal, etc.
For six years, the GOP controlled all three branches of the federal government. And while corporate tax cuts, tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation all happened, the social conservative agenda barely got touched (except for a few gay marriage bans in states where gay marriage was already illegal). In 2006, after only a few years in power, the Republicans lost Congress in the wake of corruption and sex scandals.
McCain has always been more of a corporate con than a social conservative–he isn’t trusted by the religious right because he isn’t socially conservative enough. To shore up that particular weak spot, he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate; the McCain-Palin ticket was designed to be a fusion ticket representing both major GOP factions.
But as the McCain-Palin ticket heads to defeat, there are signs that the cracks in the GOP coalition may blow up into a full-blown civil war, and McCain and Palin will be the proxies through which the civil war will be waged. Right now, Palin’s camp is saying that McCain mismanaged her, fed her talking points and didn’t let her be herself, while McCain’s camp is saying Palin was unprepared, went off-message and came off as a ‘whack job.’
As it stands, both factions have been equally discredited—the financial crisis ruined the corporate cons while the social conservatives are failing to do their duty and out-organize the Democrats. Still, both sides will claim to be the heir to Reaganism, since Reaganism was a combination of both factions’ philosophies.
Who will win? That’s impossible to tell, at least right now. But no matter what, the GOP will have a major bloodletting, which will be entirely deserved—conservatives created this monster; let them live with the consequences.
UPDATED: See this:
And this:
Allies of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are now trying to throw McCain aide Nicolle Wallace under the proverbial bus, and as they do so those in McCain’s circle are wary of the impact on Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., himself.
And this:
Top McCain Aides: ‘Palin Simply Knew Nothing About National And International Issues’
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Economics, Faith, Government, Governors, Media, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Senate | Tags: 2008, Alaskan Independence Party, Bill Ayers, David Brickner, Economics, Faith, John Hagee, McCain-Palin, Obama-Biden, Phil Gramm, Shame, Smear, Vicki Iseman
Be afraid? Of THIS guy? Um, why?
Only 31 days of this nonsense left:
Palin says Obama ‘palling around’ with terrorists
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday accused Democrat Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists” because of an association with a former ’60s radical, stepping up an effort to portray Obama as unacceptable to American voters.
Palin’s reference was to Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the group the Weather Underground. Its members took credit for bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol, during the Vietnam War era. Obama, who was a child when the group was active, has denounced Ayers’ radical views and activities.
Yeah, guys, because those attacks worked really well when they first debuted 8 months ago, right? They were so shocking and destructive that they cost Obama the Democratic Primary, right? I mean, you’re not just dredging up the worst of the worst from the primaries because you have only one month left to go and no good talking points? Right?
But hey, if we’re going to talk about past associations, let’s talk about them. How about John McCain’s friendship with Charles Keating? And then we can talk about his inappropriately-close relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist whose company had business before McCain’s Senate committee. And then we can talk about his economic advisor, Phil Gramm, who first helped create our economic crisis and then turned around and called America a ‘nation of whiners‘ when everything started falling apart. And hey, wasn’t Sarah Palin cozy with the radical, secessionist Alaskan Independence Party? Cozy enough to deliver a video address their national convention? And wasn’t her husband an actual registered member of the party for seven years?
And if they want to talk about pastors, let’s talk about pastors. How about John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain actively sought? John Hagee, who wants a war with Iran to bring about the end times? John Hagee, who called the Catholic church ‘the great whore‘? And what about Sarah Palin’s pastor? You know, the guy who turned his pulpit over to Jews for Jesus founder David Brickner, who then proclaimed that terrorist attacks on Israelites was God’s punishment for Jews not embracing Jesus? Do they really want to go down this road?
Or, here’s a novel idea–how about we stop with the smears and the personal attacks? How about we actually put ‘Country First’ and focus on the major challenges our country is facing? These are serious times that call for serious leadership; the same old politics-as-usual game of fear ‘n smear won’t work this time around.
I mean, McCain and Palin are trying to scare people. But people are already scared–scared they’re going to lose their jobs, scared they’re going to lose their retirements, scared they’re going to lose their houses, scared they’re going to lose their health care, scared they won’t be able to pay the bills or send their kids off to college. We’re worried, but Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going out there every day and showing that we don’t have to be afraid because they know how to solve our country’s financial crisis. They’re the ones looking Presidential and showing real leadership, showing the steadiness and resolve we’ve been hungering for these past eight years.
On the other hand, John McCain and Sarah Palin are dodging every single substantive issue, instead throwing out attacks in the desperate hope that everyone will suddenly stop caring about their houses and jobs and pensions and retirements and bills and kids and suddenly start caring about some guy named Bill Ayers and whatever he did or didn’t do thirty years ago.
John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to realize–far too late–that the American people want to vote for solutions, not just the lesser of two evils. This time around, the GOP won’t succeed in scaring us all into voting for them–they did that back in 2004 and we’ve spent the past four years paying for it. We won’t let it happen again.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Economics, Faith, Progressives, Race, Senate | Tags: 2008, Barack Obama, Campaigns, Candidates, Democratic National Convention, Democrats, Economics, Faith, Michelle Obama
Here is the full text of Michelle Obama’s speech in Denver last night:
As you might imagine, for Barack, running for President is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother Craig.
I can’t tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I’ve felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life.
At six-foot-six, I’ve often felt like Craig was looking down on me too…literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn’t looking down on me – he was watching over me.
And he’s been there for me every step of the way since that clear February day 19 months ago, when – with little more than our faith in each other and a hunger for change – we joined my husband, Barack Obama, on the improbable journey that’s brought us to this moment.
But each of us also comes here tonight by way of our own improbable journey.
I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend.
I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president.
I come here as a Mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world – they’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future – and all our children’s future – is my stake in this election.
And I come here as a daughter – raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker, and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters.
My Dad was our rock. Although he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in his early thirties, he was our provider, our champion, our hero. As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk, it took him longer to get dressed in the morning. But if he was in pain, he never let on. He never stopped smiling and laughing – even while struggling to button his shirt, even while using two canes to get himself across the room to give my Mom a kiss. He just woke up a little earlier, and worked a little harder.
He and my mom poured everything they had into me and Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you’re loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go on to college. So I know firsthand from their lives – and mine – that the American Dream endures.
And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.
And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
And as our friendship grew, and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to the work he’d done when he first moved to Chicago after college. Instead of heading to Wall Street, Barack had gone to work in neighborhoods devastated when steel plants shut down, and jobs dried up. And he’d been invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.
The people gathered together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life. They were parents living paycheck to paycheck; grandparents trying to get by on a fixed income; men frustrated that they couldn’t support their families after their jobs disappeared. Those folks weren’t asking for a handout or a shortcut. They were ready to work – they wanted to contribute. They believed – like you and I believe – that America should be a place where you can make it if you try.
Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be.” And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is – even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves – to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn’t that the great American story?
It’s the story of men and women gathered in churches and union halls, in town squares and high school gyms – people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had – refusing to settle, determined to mold our future into the shape of our ideals.
It is because of their will and determination that this week, we celebrate two anniversaries: the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote, and the 45th anniversary of that hot summer day when Dr. King lifted our sights and our hearts with his dream for our nation.
I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history – knowing that my piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me. All of them driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work. The same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country:
People who work the day shift, kiss their kids goodnight, and head out for the night shift – without disappointment, without regret – that goodnight kiss a reminder of everything they’re working for.
The military families who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. The servicemen and women who love this country so much, they leave those they love most to defend it.
The young people across America serving our communities – teaching children, cleaning up neighborhoods, caring for the least among us each and every day.
People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters – and sons – can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher.
People like Joe Biden, who’s never forgotten where he came from, and never stopped fighting for folks who work long hours and face long odds and need someone on their side again.
All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do – that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.
That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack’s journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.
That is why I love this country.
And in my own life, in my own small way, I’ve tried to give back to this country that has given me so much. That’s why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities. Because I believe that each of us – no matter what our age or background or walk of life – each of us has something to contribute to the life of this nation.
It’s a belief Barack shares – a belief at the heart of his life’s work.
It’s what he did all those years ago, on the streets of Chicago, setting up job training to get people back to work and afterschool programs to keep kids safe – working block by block to help people lift up their families.
It’s what he did in the Illinois Senate, moving people from welfare to jobs, passing tax cuts for hard working families, and making sure women get equal pay for equal work.
It’s what he’s done in the United States Senate, fighting to ensure the men and women who serve this country are welcomed home not just with medals and parades, but with good jobs and benefits and health care – including mental health care.
That’s why he’s running – to end the war in Iraq responsibly, to build an economy that lifts every family, to make health care available for every American, and to make sure every child in this nation gets a world class education all the way from preschool to college. That’s what Barack Obama will do as President of the United States of America.
He’ll achieve these goals the same way he always has – by bringing us together and reminding us how much we share and how alike we really are. You see, Barack doesn’t care where you’re from, or what your background is, or what party – if any – you belong to. That’s not how he sees the world. He knows that thread that connects us – our belief in America’s promise, our commitment to our children’s future – is strong enough to hold us together as one nation even when we disagree.
It was strong enough to bring hope to those neighborhoods in Chicago.
It was strong enough to bring hope to the mother he met worried about her child in Iraq; hope to the man who’s unemployed, but can’t afford gas to find a job; hope to the student working nights to pay for her sister’s health care, sleeping just a few hours a day.
And it was strong enough to bring hope to people who came out on a cold Iowa night and became the first voices in this chorus for change that’s been echoed by millions of Americans from every corner of this nation.
Millions of Americans who know that Barack understands their dreams; that Barack will fight for people like them; and that Barack will finally bring the change we need.
And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.
And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they – and your sons and daughters – will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming. How this time, in this great country – where a girl from the South Side of Chicago can go to college and law school, and the son of a single mother from Hawaii can go all the way to the White House – we committed ourselves to building the world as it should be.
So tonight, in honor of my father’s memory and my daughters’ future – out of gratitude to those whose triumphs we mark this week, and those whose everyday sacrifices have brought us to this moment – let us devote ourselves to finishing their work; let us work together to fulfill their hopes; and let us stand together to elect Barack Obama President of the United States of America.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Faith, International, Progressives, Senate | Tags: 2008, Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Faith, Israel, Middle East
Today’s Electoral Map (From FiveThirtyEight): Obama 298.5 EV ; McCain 239.5 EV
This is the prayer Barack Obama left at Jerusalem’s Western Wall during his trip to the Middle East last week:
Lord– Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.
If only our current leaders had prayed for protection against pride, perhaps we’d be living in a better country right now.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Faith, Governors, Senate | Tags: 2008, Ann Coulter, Campaigns, Candidates, Elections, Extremists, James Dobson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh
Cross-posted at Daily Kos
Recently, James Dobson–Christian conservative and head of the extremist group Focus on the Family–endorsed Mike Huckabee, saying that he would never vote for John McCain. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, the GOP rank-and-file booed McCain during his speech. On show after show, right-wing talking head Rush Limbaugh trashes McCain. Republican stormtrooper Ann Coulter said she would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than John McCain. Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the GOP needs to “shrug off McCain.” Disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay refused to say he’d vote for McCain, even if it would “keep the Clintons out of the White House.”
Why are conservatives kneecapping McCain? While he does have a long record of making enemies within the Republican Party, he has an extremely conservative voting record and he sides with the GOP more often than not. He’s the presumptive Republican nominee–in all likelihood, he’ll be carrying the Republican banner this election. So why would they hurt their own party by attacking their Presidential nominee right out of the gate?
Well, the people kneecapping McCain aren’t just Republicans–they’re movement conservatives. They don’t care about winning the next election, they care about advancing conservative ideas. The movementarians know that their power and influence comes from being the leaders of the conservative movement, and they’ll fight to advance that movement–at any cost.Though McCain’s a conservative, he’s not a movement conservative–he’s an establishmentarian who, despite his pandering, doesn’t always subscribe to the movement’s orthodoxy. He’s willing to contradict them, to throw them under the bus, to fall short of the extreme partisanship demanded by the likes of Limbaugh and DeLay. That’s not to say he doesn’t ever do those things–he just doesn’t do them enough.
McCain will do almost anything to get ahead. In this post-Bush world–where conservative ideas are nowhere near as popular as they once were–McCain wouldn’t be above throwing the conservative movement under the bus, even going as far as to work with some Democrats now and again (instead of shutting them out in true conservative fashion).
So the conservative movement is kneecapping McCain because they don’t care if he loses. In fact, it would be better for them if he lost. Why?
First–as soon as a Democratic President is inaugurated–the conservatives will lay all the country’s problems at his/her feet. They’ll blame him/her for all the problems he/she would inherit from the Bush administration, browbeating him/her for failing solve those problems quickly or completely enough. With both a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, the conservative movement will be able to spend the next 4 years doing what they do best–complaining and attacking Democrats. It would be like the Clinton years all over again.
Second, if McCain were to lose the conservative movement will claim victory. They’ll spend the next 4 years browbeating Republicans, telling them that they lost because they didn’t nominate a “true conservative.” Come 2012, the movementarians will push their extremist candidate of choice on the voters, pointing to the failed McCain candidacy as proof that Republican voters better listen to them–or else.
Third, the movementarians aren’t stupid; they see the writing on the wall. They see massive Democratic fundraising and pitiful Republican fundraising. They see huge turnout on the Democratic side and tepid interest on the Republican side. They see two Democratic candidates with thriving movements and one Republican candidate with lukewarm support and a lagging campaign. They know that 2008 is going to be an uphill battle for the Republican Party, and that it’s becoming increasingly unlikely they can win the next election.
So, as Digby puts it:
Do you get the feeling that the conservatives are gaming this thing? I knew that you would.
They know they are going to lose. They will blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn’t a real conservative (just like Bush.) They know when to fall back and regroup. They’re already playing for the next election.
Everybody sing: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.
The movementarians are throwing McCain under the bus–before he can throw them under the bus–for the sake of teir movement. Sure, they’ll be locked out of government for a few years–possibly a good number of years–but they and their ideas will live on to fight another day. They’re trying to make McCain’s loss not a failure of Republicanism or conservatism, but a failure of moderation. In 2012, they’ll be back in full force, demanding that the GOP voters pay fealty to their extremist, cutthroat politics once again.
The conservative movement is dying, and the movementarians are desperately trying to stop the bleeding. Will their gamble pay off? Will they be successful? Or will their contribution to a John McCain loss usher in a new Democratic coalition that could lock conservatives out of government for years to come? Only time will tell.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Faith, Governors, House, Media, Polls, Progressives, Senate | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Florida, Primaries, Republicans
Here are Florida’s results, via TPM:
| Republicans (94% reporting) | Democrats (94% reporting) |
| candidate |
votes |
percentage
|
candidate |
votes | percentage |
| Giuliani | 274,244 |
15% |
Clinton | 832,107 | 50% |
| Huckabee | 252,098 | 14% | Edwards |
242,057 | 14% |
| McCain | 673,414 | 36% | Obama | 552,004 | 33% |
| Paul | 60,201 | 3% | |||
| Romney | 579,437 | 31% |
Keep in mind that the Democratic results are, since Florida’s delegation was stripped by the DNC and none of the candidates were allowed to campaign in that state.
On the Republican side, where there were some delegates in play, John McCain emerged as tonight’s big winner. He vindicated his successes in New Hampshire and South Carolina with a victory in Florida, which will award him 57 delegates, enough to make him the new GOP front-runner.
The exit polls give us some interesting information about how people voted– conservatives supported Romney, while moderates (who knew there were any moderate Republicans left) went for McCain.
I thought that the GOP primary would become a three-way race, each candidate supported by one Republican faction–Huckabee would get social conservatives, McCain would get foreign policy hawks and Romney would get corporate conservatives.
Now, though, Huck is fading fast, which leaves Romney and McCain to split the GOP between moderates and conservatives. Huckabee needed a win tonight, and now he’s going to have a difficult time moving forward–his unexpected win in Iowa set some high expectations which he hasn’t been able to meet since.
It was widely known that New Hampshire, Nevada and Michigan weren’t fertile ground for him, but South Carolina and Florida were both firmly within his reach, and his losses there are huge setbacks. Huck says he’s staying until the end, but that may not be in his control–with nothing standing between now and Super Tuesday, Huck doesn’t have the support or the momentum to become the Republican nominee.
A bigger loser than Huck, though, is Rudy Giuliani. After his chest-thumping going into Florida, there is nothing left for him to do now but drop out. Early on, he benefitted from McCain’s collapse to become the national front-runner. Later, Rudy began bleeding support for a variety of reasons–non-conservative positions on various social issues, exploitation of 9/11, foreign policy uberhawkishness, and scandal after scandal after scandal. The more people got to know Giuliani, the less they liked him–as the campaign progressed, his support dropped lower and lower.
Rudy invested heavily in the early states–particularly South Carolina–without a single decent showing anywhere; Florida was his firewall, and all he could manage to was a distant third place.
Currently, CNN is reporting that Giuliani will drop out and endorse McCain, ostensibly with the hope of getting a position with his campaign and holding on to the national spotlight for a little longer. With him out of the picture, the GOP race is down to four candidates–Romney, McCain, Huckabee and Ron Paul.
Up next is Super Tuesday on February 5th. A week from today, a huge number of delegates will be awarded on both sides–not enough to decide the nominees, but enough to put some candidates well on their way to the nomination.
On the GOP side, McCain will be riding high off of his recent victories, while Romney will be touting his conservative credentials and trying to recover from tonight’s defeat.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama will have his resounding win in South Carolina and his impressive lineup of endorsers on his side, while Clinton still maintains a sizable lead in the most influential February 5th states.
And, as always, I’ll bring you the results as they become known. For now, we have a week to get ready–it’ll be interesting to see how things go.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Faith, Governors, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Conservatives, Elections, Extremism, George W. Bush, Liars, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani
In order to diffuse criticism that the Mormon church is racist (since it took them until 1978 to allow African-Americans to be ordained or participate in certain temple ceremonies) Mitt Romney started saying that his father–Michigan Governor George Romney–once marched with Martin Luther King Jr.Unfortunately for him, a few journalists started digging and they found that Romney’s story is completely made-up.More from Blue Mass Group:
Mitt Romney will stop at nothing to score political points. Even if it means lying outright about his father.
I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.
Uh huh.
He made a similar statement Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said, “You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.”
Right. Got it — dad marched with MLK. Even David Broder says so, and supplies some corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. (BMG bonus points for identifying the source of that phrase!)
As Mitt Romney recalled in his address, his father was able to remind people that he had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. (through upscale Grosse Pointe, Mich., in support of open-housing legislation).
Problem is, it’s not true. None of it. As the Phoenix’s David Bernstein reveals (see also update here) in some superb digging, George Romney never marched “with” — i.e., in the presence of, at the same place at the same time — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here’s Bernstein, who in addition to calling out Romney, calls out Broder:
[W]hile the late George W. Romney, a four-term governor of Michigan, can lay claim to a strong record on civil rights, the Phoenix can find no evidence that the senior Romney actually marched with King, nor anything in the public record suggesting that he ever claimed to do so. Nor did Mitt Romney ever previously claim that this took place, until long after his father passed away in 1995 – not even when defending accusations of the Mormon church’s discriminatory past during his 1994 Senate campaign.Asked about the specifics of George Romney’s march with MLK, Mitt Romney’s campaign told the Phoenix that it took place in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. That jibes with the description proffered by David S. Broder in a Washington Post column written days after Mitt’s College Station speech.
Broder, in that column, references a 1967 book he co-authored on the Republican Party, which included a chapter on George Romney. It includes a one-line statement that the senior Romney “has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit.”
But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published. “I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. (B[ro]der was not immediately available for comment.)
Faced with the unfortunate reality that Mitt was making things up, his campaign has retreated into a hilarious Humpty-Dumptyism about what it means to “march with” someone. You see, it doesn’t mean that you were actually there. It means that, well, you participated in a march about a related topic on a different day, and maybe you thought about the guy while you were doing it.
Mitt, in other words, was “speaking figuratively, not literally.”
[Emphasis Added]
This is just ridiculous. Romney has been lying and flip-flopping since day 1 of his campaign, but this more than takes the cake. What sense does it make to diffuse criticism that the Mormon church is racist by making up a story about his father marching with Martin Luther King, even though such a claim is blatantly untrue and can be proven false relatively easily? And what kind of truth-bending hair-splitting parsing is it to say that his father marched “figuratively” with King? How does one figuratively march with someone?
Seriously, is this is the best the GOP can do? A flip-flopping serially-exaggerating Governor of Massachusetts, the scandal-prone law-bending cross-dressing Mayor of New York City, and the corrupt, incompetent, vindictive, radical fundamentalist Arkansas Governor with exceptionally poor judgment and Ron Paul? Seriously?
Conservatives don’t seem to understand that the Republican Party is at a historic crossroads. They have the chance to leave their Reagan-Bush era baggage behind and redefine what it means to be a conservative. They can ditch the burden of the Bush years by nominating a visionary candidate who will lead their party into the future, undoing the damage they caused and improving the lives of millions of Americans.
Instead, the GOP nominates a field full of faceless cookie-cutter Republicans; a field full of liars, exaggerators, incompetents, radicals, extremists and others who are completely unfit to be America’s next President. Romney’s latest fabrication shows just how poor the Republican field is, and just how desperate the GOP has become.
UPDATE: Daily Kos has this supposed clarification from the Romney campaign:
A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 — although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.
[Emphasis Added]
Again, how can you and someone else march together if you’re not in the same city or even doing it on the same day? Doesn’t that contradict the meaning of “together?” Do we even need to discuss this?
Romney’s in serious trouble. He’s been losing momentum for weeks, and this latest incident shows just how much of a slick used car salesman he is–willing to say anything, anything at all, just to get you on his side. This man should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. Period.
UPDATE II: More from The Huffington Post’s Chris Kelly:
Although they never marched together, they did march separately. In that they were both in Michigan and ambulatory at the same time. And, by “the same time,” I mean “different times.”
Except, if you read the Phoenix story, George Romney didn’t actually “march” anywhere. But he was present at an event. Where King was not.
And Mitt never “saw” it, because he was doing missionary work in France.
WHAT MITT MEANT:
We can all agree that George Romney and Martin Luther King were both alive in June, 1963.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Environment, Faith, Government, Governors, Media, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Bad Luck Huck, Campaigns, Candidates, Election, Environmentalism, Extremism, LGBT, Mike Huckabee, Pro-Choice, Radicalism, Republicans
Another news cycle, another embarrassing story for Mike Huckabee. This time, it’s a book he wrote in 1998 called Kids Who Kill. Some key excerpts:
Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.
[...]
It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.
[...]
The legal commitment of ideological secularism to any and all of the fanatically twisted fringes of American culture—pornographers, gay activists, abortionists, and other professional liberationists—is a pathetically self-defeating crusade that has confused liberty with license.
[...]
Men who have rejected God and do not walk in faith are more often than not immoral, impure, and improvident (Gal. 5:19-21). They are prone to extreme and destructive behavior, indulging in perverse vices and dissipating sensuality (1 Cor. 6:9-10). And they—along with their families and loved ones—are thus driven over the brink of destruction (Prov. 23:21).
Blaming pro-choice Americans, LGBT rights activists and environmentalism for school violence? Lumping the LGBT community in with pedophiles and necrophiliacs? Asserting that religion is the only source of morality? I knew Huck was a right-wing extremist, but I had no idea he was this extreme.
Then again, this was pretty much the strategy of the conservative culture warriors of the ’90’s–take a bunch of people you don’t like, lump them all together, blame them for society’s ills and prescribe religion/Republicanism as a solution. I’m surprised that Huck–who is renowned by our political press for his “charm” and “authenticity”–would subscribe to this cookie-cutter right-wing boilerplate. Then again, with Huck, stuff like this is hardly surprising.
Another news cycle, another disturbing revelation about Bad Luck Huck. How long until the GOP realizes just how many skeletons there are in his closet? Or do they not even realize that this guy is a complete embarrassment, that it would be political suicide to hand their party over to him?
Personally, I’m wondering what tomorrow will bring…
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Economics, Environment, Faith, Government, House, Immigration, International, Race, Rights | Tags: 2008, Abortion, Campaigns, Candidates, Corporate Power, Elections, Environment, Immigration, Reactionaries, Reproductive Choice, Republicans, Ron Paul, The Oil Industry
Recently, Ron Paul broke the one-day fundraising record for a Republican Presidential candidate, raking in approximately $5.2 million dollars. Political Wire has more:
“Most of the donations were made over the Internet in what the supporters called a “money bomb” timed to coincide with the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. The last fund-raising blitz, which took in 40,000 donations, was timed to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day, which commemorates a British mercenary who tried unsuccessfully to kill King James I on Nov. 5, 1605.” The record take means Paul will likely lead his rivals for money raised during the fourth quarter.
Paul’s supporters will tell you to “Google Ron Paul;” in light of his recent fundriaising success, let’s give that a shot and see what he actually stands for–Orcinus has the definitive account, and it’s nothing less than appalling:
- Ron Paul wants to deny women control of their own reproductive systems–despite calling himself a libertarian, he doesn’t seem to mind government intrusion when it comes to abortion. (H.R.1095 H.R.777 H.R.1548 H.AMDT.1003 (A024) H.AMDT.380 (A022) H.AMDT.312 (A011) H.R.4984). Not only that, but Paul wants to eliminate the legal distinction between a zygote and a person (H.R.2597 H.R.1094 H.R.776 H.R.392).
- Paul wants to prevent the federal courts–or even federal precedent–for being used by those who have been discriminated against due to religious beliefs or sexual orientation. His bills would also prevent cross-state recognition of gay marriage (H.R.300 H.R.4379 H.R.5739 H.R.3893 H.R.1547 H.R.4922 H.R.5078). He also wants to limit the court system’s ability to hear abortion cases (H.R.1545 H.R.1546 H.R.2875 H.R.3400 H.R.3691 H.R.15169).
- Despite claiming to be a libertarian, Paul opposes allowing people to express their freedom of speech by burning the American flag (H.J.RES.80 H.J.RES.82).
- Ron Paul wants to repeal workplace safety and health legislation, including the Occupational Health and Safety Act (H.R.2310 H.R.13264). And so much for giving power to the people–he wants to make it easier to decertify labor unions (H.R.694). In addition, Paul also opposes the minimum wage (H.R.2962) and wants to destroy Social Security (H.R.2030 H.R.4604).
- Paul opposes pro-democracy voting reforms, even after the disastrous 2000 election (H.CON.RES.48 H.CON.RES.443). He also opposes the motor voter laws, which make it easier for people–particularly poorer people–to register to vote (H.R.2139).
- Ron Paul wants to gut anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation (H.R.1247 H.R.1789) and eliminate corporate oversight (H.R.1204). For someone who seems to support giving power to the people, the only people he wants to help are the already-powerful.
- Paul wants to repeal anti-discimination laws (H.R.3863 H.R.5842 H.R.4982), as well as eliminating birthright citizenship (H.J.RES.46 H.J.RES.42), which is in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
- Ron Paul wants to repeal or severely weaken environmental protection legislation (H.J.RES.104 H.R.3735 H.R.4423 H.R.2504 H.R.7079 H.R.724), as well as promoting offshore oil drilling, building more oil refineries and mining for coal on federal land (H.R.2415 H.R.4004 H.R.393 H.R.4639 H.R.5293 H.R.6936).
- Paul, who portrays himself as pro-peace, opposes dismantling ICBM silos in the United States (H.R.1665 H.R.3769) and supports keeping the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court (H.R.1154 H.AMDT.480 (A010) H.R.4169 H.CON.RES.23 H.RES.416). He has also tried to limit the impact of international law on the United States (H.J.RES.1028 H.J.RES.492 H.CON.RES.49 H.R.4118 H.R.1658), going as far as trying to withdraw America from the U.N. (H.R.1146 H.R.1146 H.AMDT.285 (A038) H.R.1146 H.AMDT.190 (A024) H.AMDT.191 (A025) H.R.1146 H.AMDT.306 (A006) H.R.1146 H.AMDT.138 (A010) H.R.1146 H.R.3890 H.R.3891 H.R.6358 H.R.14788). In addition, Paul supports withdrawing the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (H.J.RES.566) and wants to re-establish U.S. ’sovereignty’ over the Panama Canal (H.CON.RES.231 H.RES.1410 H.R.2522).
- Paul wants to weaken our education system by using federal power to interfere with state efforts to improve standards for teachers (H.R.966 H.R.1706 H.R.4653).
- Once again pandering to the powerful, Paul wants to reduce the tax burden of the wealthiest Americans, including those who inherited their fortunes. In addition, he wants to disproportionately burden the poor and working clas by imposing a flat tax (H.J.RES.23 H.J.RES.14 H.J.RES.15 H.J.RES.45 H.J.RES.81 H.J.RES.116 H.R.5484 H.R.2137 H.R.1664 H.J.RES.23 H.R.6352 H.R.4569 H.R.15619). Paul also wants to force us to pay our income tax every month, eliminating withholding (H.R.1364 H.R.4855).
- Paul also wants to abandon the dollar, creating 50 state currencies instead (H.R.2779 H.R.3931).
So, I Googled Ron Paul, and I found a record of conservative, pro-corporate, reactionary policies that are to the far right of even the Republican Party. And keep in mind that I didn’t include some of Paul’s crazier aspects, like his obsession with the gold standard or his desire to “protect” American troops from wearing the insignia of the U.N. or any “foreign states.”
I don’t know what his followers see in him, but it seems that they have been taken in by Paul’s campaign rhetoric, which doesn’t match his record in Congress at all. Personally, I wonder if they would support him so vehemently if they followed their own advice and Googled Ron Paul. Either that, or this country has far more deep-pocketed right-wing extremists than I thought.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Economics, Faith, Government, Immigration | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Christan Right, Elections, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Paul Waldman, Plutocrats, Republicans, Theocrats
Or, as Paul Waldman calls it, The Plutocrats v. The Theocrats:
After months of tedium and mindless chest-thumping, the race for the Republican presidential nomination finally got interesting over the last couple of weeks. And the way it did so highlights the fundamental rift threatening the future of the GOP: the divide between the party’s corporate/anti-tax wing, which includes the people who write the checks, and its social conservative wing, which includes the people who get bodies to the polls. It’s the plutocrats versus the theocrats, and at the moment it’s hard to tell who’s going to win.
[...]
And the plutocrats had such high hopes for Romney, who is truly one of their own: to the American aristocracy born (his father was a corporate CEO and Michigan governor) and with a successful career in business, Romney gives the sense that he plans out his breakfast with a Powerpoint presentation. (”Today’s waffles will proactively impact forward-oriented goal actualization while incentivizing value-added synergisms. And there will be syrup.”)
The plutocrats couldn’t care less whether Romney’s recent conversion to hard-right social conservatism was sincere. He can blather on all he wants about activist judges and border fences; what’s important to them is the tax code, whether the National Labor Relations Board keeps its Bush-era affection for union-busting, and whether agencies like OSHA and the FDA remain regulatory panda bears, lolling about in the grass munching bamboo without worrying their little heads about the safety of workers and consumers. When it comes to these matters, the plutocrats know Romney is their guy.
But they don’t quite trust Huckabee, who, as Sarah Posner has noted, has shown troubling flashes of sympathy for ordinary people and had a mixed record in Arkansas, both raising and cutting taxes at various times. Perhaps in order to appear more of an anti-tax fundamentalist, Huckabee is advocating eliminating all current federal taxes in favor of a national sales tax, an idea so ludicrous no one bothers to debate it.
But as of yet, Huckabee has not pledged allegiance to the de rigueur Republican tax fantasy that cutting taxes ultimately leads to an increase in revenues. Rudy Giuliani has climbed aboard this express train to Stupidville, saying in a recent television ad, “I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues. Democrats don’t know that, they don’t believe that.”
[...]
These voters [the theocrats] are less than entirely pleased with what they’ve gotten from all their hard work over the last few elections. Every two years, they’re promised that if they work their little hearts out, they’ll finally get those constitutional amendments banning abortion and putting the gays in their place. But even George W. Bush, who worked harder to convince the religious right that he was their man more than any GOP nominee ever has, didn’t power up the time machine and take us all back to the bliss of the 1950s. But he worked hard for those tax cuts — you bet your life he did. The plutocrats got showered with riches, and the theocrats got lines from hymns dropped into speeches. As Bush himself famously said, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — can’t get fooled again.”
[Emphsais Added]
And, thus is the nature of the Romney-Huckabee battle, and thus is the nature of the crumbling conservative coalition.
The Republican party relies on the Christian right as footsoldiers–they carry the Party’s message out to rural America, they preach GOP gospel from the pulpits, and on election day they turn out to the polls in large enough numbers to get Republicans elected.
But, in the end, the Christian right gets a lot of talk and nearly no action in return. Why? Because the GOP cares more about money than ideology. Sure, they’ll pander to the wants and needs of the Christian right, but when it comes down to it they spend their political capital on tax cuts for their wealthy buddies, Wall-Street-pleasing Social Security privatization, free trade, and other giveaways to the top 1% (of which the theocrats are usually not members).
Look at recent years–the GOP controlled all three branches of government, yet they never gave the Christian right their day in the sun. Abortion is still legal, and it’s likely to stay legal for a long time. There was no constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and the 2004 state-level gay marriage bans will eventually be overturned. Immigration reform will not happen without a path to citizenship, and so on.
Simply put, the theocrats have been lied to. Year after year, the GOP promises them the world, yet once in office they stab them in the back and spend their time stuffing their pockets. Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the Christian right is quickly learning that they aren’t part of that group of friends, and that the GOP has taken advantage of them for far too long. The Christian right is revolting, hoping to exact revenge against the faux-conservative plutocrats who have taken advantage of them for so long.
The Republicans have created a monster that they can no longer control. The Christian conservative footsoldiers have stopped listening to their plutocratic masters and are bucking the party orthodoxy–they’re determined to make Mike Huckabee their candidate, much to the chagrin of the moneyed Romney campaign. And while plutocratic money can certainly get people out to the polls, it’s not nearly as effective as theocratic zealotry.
The plutocrats are afraid. They’re worried that Huck–who couldn’t care less about stuffing their pockets, but who really does care about Armageddon and the end times–will become the standard-bearer of their party. What will they do? What can they do? Will they support him? Will they abandon him? Will they find someone else?
In the end, there is poetic justice in this–the Republican Party, which has become dependent on the dogmatism of the Christian right, is now being consumed by that same burning zealotry. Will the GOP be able to survive a revolt by the monster that the Party believed–in all hubris–they could control forever?
Filed under: 2008 Election, Breaking, Conservatives, Corruption, Faith, Governors, Iraq, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Arkansas, Campaigns, Candidates, Corruption, Democrats, Ed Rollins, Elections, George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Two-Buck Huck
As time goes on, story after story comes out that gives us more and more reasons to dislike Mike Huckabee.
In June 1998, the Southern Baptist convention amended its official statement of beliefs for the first time in 35 years to declare that “a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband.” And Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister then serving as governor of Arkansas, signed a full-page ad in USA Today in support of the statement (along with 129 other evangelical leaders).
But wait, there’s more:
Mike Huckabee criticizes the Bush administration for having an “arrogant bunker mentality” that “has been counterproductive at home and abroad.” Nevertheless, Huckabee — who supports the war in Iraq — said he would “not withdraw troops from Iraq any faster than Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander there, recommends.”
And we’re not through yet:
Today, former governor Mike Huckabee (R-AK) announced Ed Rollins as his new campaign chairman. In 1993, Rollins chaired the successful campaign of Christinie Todd Whitman in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, where he paid black leaders to not speak out for opponent Jim Florio:
“We went into black churches and we basically said to ministers who had endorsed Florio, ‘Do you have a special project?’ And they said, “We’ve already endorsed Florio,” Mr. Rollins said. “We said, ‘That’s fine. Don’t get up on the pulpit Sunday and say it’s your moral obligation that you go on Tuesday to vote for Jim Florio.’”
Mr. Rollins said the campaign used a more direct approach to persuade some Democratic political workers to stay home on Election Day. “We said to some of their key workers, ‘How much have they paid you to do your normal duty?’ ” he said. “Well, we’ll match it. Go home, sit and watch television.”
Are you kidding me?
This is the man the GOP wants to be the next President of the United States? This guy represents the absolute worst of the Bush administration–the extremism, dogmatism, corruption, arrogance. A Huckabee presidency would be just as bad–if nor worse–than the Bush presidency.
So much has come to light that hurts Huckabee, it’s hard to even keep it all straight. Corruption as Governor of Arkansas? Wayne DuMond? Quarantining AIDS patients? Ignoring the NIE? Religious extremism? Demanding wives submit to their husbands? Wanting to stay in Iraq? Shacking up with racist anti-black activists? Where will this list end? How much will it take for the GOP to realize that Huck wasn’t even qualified to be Governor of Arkansas, and he’s certainly not qualified to be our next President?
It just goes on and on and on. Then again, let the GOP nominate Two-Buck Huck; it’ll just make it that much easier for the Democrats to win next November.
UPDATE: Another news cycle, another unpleasant revelation about Huck:
Questions are being raised about then-Gov. Huckabee’s 2004 decision to grant clemency to a repeat Driving While Intoxicated offender in Arkansas named Eugene Fields, despite the objections of a law enforcement official at the time. Documents obtained by NBC News reveal Fields’ case was handled differently from any other DWI clemency or pardon granted by Huckabee, and some Republicans are now suggesting significant political contributions may have influenced the governor’s decision.
Cash-for-clemency? Tell me again how this guy is supposed to be the epitome of honesty and morality?
More from, of all people, George Will:
“Huckabee, this week it was learned that he gave more clemencies, one every four days, to convicted criminals in Arkansas – more than the three preceding governors combined, included Bill Clinton.”
Filed under: Conservatives, Faith, Media | Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Christianity, Conservatism, Conservatives, Holidays, Jesus Christ, Judaism, Media Matters, Progressives, War on Christmas
Bill O’Reilly recently declared victory in the War on Christmas. I wonder if this was what he had in mind:
A Muslim man jumped to the aid of three Jewish subway riders after they were attacked by a group of young people who objected to one of the Jews saying “Happy Hanukkah,” a spokeswoman for the three said Wednesday.
Friday’s altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out “Merry Christmas,” to which rider Walter Adler responded, “Happy Hanukkah,” said Toba Hellerstein.
“Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy’s face like I’ve called his mother something,” Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.
Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler’s companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.
One member of the group allegedly yelled, “Oh, Hanukkah. That’s the day that the Jews killed Jesus,” she said.
When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.
Another passenger, Hassan Askari — a Muslim student from Bangladesh — came to Adler’s aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.
[...]
The suspects are to appear in Brooklyn District Court on February 7 on charges that include assault, attempted assault, menacing, harassment, unlawful assembly, riot and disorderly conduct, Silverstein said.
The New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident, and will determine whether the suspects will be charged with hate crimes, Officer Philip Hauser told CNN.
[Emphasis Added]
I’m not saying this attack was caused by the conservatives’ supposed”War on Christmas,” but the same philosophy underlies both.
Conservatives believe that–since 80% of America is Christian and 83% plan to celebrate Christmas this year–saying “Merry Christmas” should not just be accepted, but required. To them, showing respect to those who celebrate other holidays–or no holidays at all–is seen as waging a “War on Christmas,” disrespecting one holiday by refusing to disrespect every other holiday. These Christian conservatives expect the entire world to kowtow to their beliefs, embodying a form of virulent majoritarianism.
Conservative culture warriors want to create a situation where “Merry Christmas” is the only acceptable holiday greeting, where recognizing other faiths is condemned as part of some “secularist progressive” agenda. Thus, you open the door to situations like the NYC subway attack, where someone who doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” is attacked for not being a member of the majority.
The “War on Christmas” is nothing more than a sad attempt by conservatives to stigmatize tolerance and push their own beliefs. There was a time when tolerance and respect were considered virtues– Christian virtues, even–and now they’re portrayed by conservatives as, ironically, anti-Christian. It’s not enough that 4/5ths of America celebrates Christmas–these conservatives aim to have Christmas be the only acceptable winter holiday. Period.
Conservatives rail against the “ACLU Grinches” who they see as as somehow harming the most widely-celebrated holiday in America, yet it’s like none of them actually read How The Grinch Stole Christmas. If they had, they would know the moral of the story: despite the fact that the Grinch stole the decorations, the food, the presents and all the typical Christmas trimmings, it didn’t stop anyone from celebrating Christmas. Why? Because Christmas isn’t about any of those things–it’s about giving and togetherness, celebration and family, seeing the best in people and recognizing the good in the world.
It doesn’t matter whether the greeter at Wal-Mart says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” and it doesn’t matter if a man on the subway wishes you a “Happy Hanukkah.” In the end, Christmas is about the spirit of the holiday–if conservatives understood this, they would spend the season embodying Christ’s message of tolerance and understanding, not demonizing their political enemies and fighting for public nativity scenes.
If you want to put the “Christ” back in “Christmas,” live up to his teachings by showing your fellow man some tolerance and love. Because, in the end, isn’t that what Christ was all about? And shouldn’t Christmas be a celebration of what Christ was all about?
UPDATE: Welcome readers of Salon’s Blog Report! Thanks for clicking through, feel free to look through the archives and I hope you stop by again tomorrow.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Faith | Tags: 2008, Campaigns, Candidates, Election, Faith, Flip Romney, Flip-Flopping, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Mormonism, Two-Buck Huck
Mitt Romney gave his religion speech today–mostly to counteract the rise of Two-Buck Huck, who has captured the heart of the religious right.
Color me unimpressed. First off, can we please stop calling it his Kennedy speech? Because it was anything but:
Finally, there was the ridiculous comparison to JFK’s 1960 speech. I say the comparison is ridiculous because the situations were completely different. In September 1960, Kennedy was the nominee of the Democratic Party, and faced the task of reassuring Americans that his faith would not conflict with the duties of the office he sought, and upon which Americans would decide within weeks. Today, Romney is just one of several Republican contenders, so his task was actually to convince the evangelical core residing within the Republican Party that his faith is not incompatible with their deciding to let him carry the Republican banner into an election that’s still almost a year away. Kennedy’s target, by necessity, was the greater America. Romney’s target, by necessity, was Republican evangelicals. (Hence the early plug: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Freedom requires religion? Really? That’s really intriguing. How so? Oh nevermind, he’s not taking questions.) So it should surprise no one that he revealed nothing about his actual religion (which was how the speech was sold), given that an actual appeal for tolerance based on an honest recounting of his theology would have been political suicide.
Romney’s speech was absolutely unimpressive, filled with the same stale rhetoric and religious-right pandering that you can get from any other Republican candidate. In fact, he used the word “Mormon” only once, and he explained nothing about his religion or his particular religious beliefs. Romney was trying to gloss over his religion, using broad platitudes about faith and belief to avoid talking about his faith and beliefs. Honestly, I think this speech will raise far more questions then it answered, and I doubt Romney’s cookie-cutter rhetoric put any skeptical minds at ease.
Also, I know he’s called Flip Romney for a reason, but this is just ridiculous. Watch the flip:
“There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”
And now the flop:
“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”
That does not make sense. Either we don’t have religious tests for candidates and thus religion isn’t important in the governance of this country, or freedom and religion are intertwined, and thus religion must play a role in American government. Either Romney doesn’t really know what he believes, or he’s trying to have it both ways–brushing off questions about his faith while throwing red meat to the very conservatives asking those questions.
Sorry, Romney, but you got this one wrong. Freedom of religion doesn’t just mean you can practice any faith you choose–it also means you can choose to practice no faith at all. You’re free to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Mormon or an Atheist or anything else. In establishing freedom of religion, our founding fathers acknowledged that freedom doesn’t need religion and religion doesn’t need freedom–if you need to be reminded of that, look no further than the Constitution.
UPDATE: More from Devilstower:
Romney
Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president.
Kennedy
For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic.
That difference is not a minor one. Kennedy’s speech was full of bold, direct confrontation of the issues facing him not as a Catholic, but as Democratic candidate for president. Romney’s speech is, beginning to end, a distortion of history. Not only does he attempt to strip the Democrat from JFK, he is ready to accept every lie about the relationship between religion and the history of the United States. His speech plays to the full set of fears Republicans have used to bludgeon the public over the last twenty years, and builds to a frighteningly explicit demand for theocracy.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Corruption, Faith, Government, Governors, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Arkansas, Campaigns, Candidates, Corruption, Elections, Push Polling, Republicans, Scandal
Huckabee’s stock is rising, both nationwide and in Iowa–it seems like Republican base voters who are dissatisfied with Romney and Giuliani are picking him as a last resort.
Unfortunately for them, Huckabee has some pretty big skeletons in his closet. According to those who know him best, Huck’s a radical right-wing Christian with a history of corrupt, hand-in-the-cookie-jar politics (Matt Taibbi has more here).
Can the Republican Party really afford to pick a Presidential nominee with a detailed history of corruption? Can they really trust Two-Buck Huck to keep his hands out of the cookie jar? If history is any guide, the answer is a resounding “no.”
UPDATE: According to Politics West, the innocuously-named group Common Sense Issues, Inc. has been conducting push polls on Two-Buck Huck’s behalf:
The group behind a pair of biting ads targeting Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall is also stirring controversy in the presidential caucus in Iowa, using a controversial tactic known as push-polling to boost Republican contender Mike Huckabee even as the tactic is being denounced by Huckabee himself.
That group, known as Common Sense Issues Inc., is a close relative of a network of organizations that have a contentious history as players in several hotly contested races over the last two years, including campaigns in Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Ohio.
[...]
The calls tell listeners they are paid for by an organization known as “Trust Huckabee,” but that group is under the umbrella of Common Sense Issues and Davis is executive director of both. The two are part of a lineage of organizations that include Common Sense 2006, Common Sense Ohio, Common Sense Tennessee, among others.
[...]
But critics, including many Republicans, say the calls are thinly veiled attack ads. In last year’s contentious senate race in Montana, the Great Falls Tribune reported that one of the polls conducted by Common Sense 2006 asked: “Does knowing that organic farmer Jon Tester voted for nearly half a billion dollars in tax increases and refuses to sign a no-new-taxes pledge, and that Conrad Burns has never voted for a single tax increase, make you even more favorable to Conrad Burns?”
The poll was denounced by both candidates, the Democrat Tester and the Republican Burns.
Davis said that so far this year, the group has been active in South Dakota and Montana, as well as Colorado and Iowa.
Just something to look out for. To be fair, campaign finance law mandates that groups such as these operate independently of the official campaign, but it’s not unheard of for campaigns and groups to skirt the law in order to collude. Whether or not he had a hand in it, negative campaigning on Huckabee’s behalf is bad news for him.
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Corruption, Faith, Government, Governors, Immigration, Scandal | Tags: 2008, Arkansas, Campaigns, Candidates, Corruption, Election, Extremism, Matt Taibbi, Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Rolling Stone, Wayne DuMond
John Gorenfeld at AlterNet has five eyebrow-raising facts about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee that everyone should know. Huckabee’s momentum in Iowa is growing, and he’s managed to hide the most of his extremism until now. Here’s the short version:
1. Clinton conspiracy theories inspired his biggest mistake.
“Clinton’s biggest crime,” claimed New York Post scribe Steve Dunleavy in 2000, was allowing a Vietnam veteran named Wayne DuMond to go to prison for 50 years after being convicted — falsely, Dunleavy said — for the 1985 knifepoint rape of the 17-year-old cheerleader Ashley Stevens, a distant cousin of the Clintons. “That rape never happened,” Dunleavy said.
In cloudy circumstances, DuMond had suffered castration before his jailing. He said a lynch mob had severed his testicles. They somehow ended up as trophies on the desk of a crooked local sheriff, Coolidge Conlee. In the view of the theorists, Conlee was somehow an “ally” of the Clintons, conjuring up a world in which state politics were on the scale of The Dukes of Hazzard. “He didn’t have no right to take them,” DuMond said of his balls in 1988.
By the time Huckabee became governor, it was believed by many on the Right that DuMond had not only been maimed but also framed by the Bill & Hillary Octopus. Responding to the pressure, Huckabee said DuMond had gotten a “raw deal” and wrote to the imprisoned DuMond: “Dear Wayne, [m]y desire is that you be released from prison. I feel that parole is the best way for your reintroduction into society to take place.”
In June 2001, Ashley Stevens heard on her car radio that DuMond — let loose by the state of Arkansas — had beein seized for strangling 39-year-old Carol Shields in Kansas City, leaving her naked and bound on a bed. Authorities had also suspected DuMond in the similar rape-murder of a 23-year-old pregnant victim, Sarah Andrasek.
Huckabee has since sought to pin the blame on a parole board for freeing the ingrateful DuMond. The next year, however, the Arkansas Times took home an alt-newsweekly award for a piece, “Huckabee Frees Career Rapist,” in which numerous inside sources said it was the governor who made the decision.
[Emphasis added]
This is worse than Willie Horton, all on Huckabee’s shoulders. He fell for a rediculous Clinton conspiracy theory, leading him to release a serial rapist from prison. A man who would let Clinton Derangement Syndrome lead him to make such a huge mistake can’t be trusted to be President. Period.
2. Win over the Christian Right? He is the Christian Right.
[...]
No moderate, James Robison — a self-described “dark-visaged, angry preacher” for whose TV ministry Huck became communications director — raged against gays. In one piece of footage, Huckabee’s boss bellows that he is “sick and tired, hearing about all the radicals and perverts and the liberals and the leftists and the Communists coming out of the closet. It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet, out of the churches and change America!”
As press flack, Huckabee had to handle the fallout in 1979 when Robison was kicked off the Dallas station WFAA for citing a National Enquirer report that gays seduce and kill children.
[...]
Despite Huckabee’s undiluted credentials — as someone who helped to build the Moral Majority, as a governor who fought to stop gays from adopting — he has been slighted by other like-minded Christian leaders.
[Emphasis added]
Huckabee played a role in building the religious right, fostering the dangerous fusion of religion and politics. He embodies some of the worst of the Republican party–extremism and dogmatism, all wrapped in self-righteous obstinance. In other words, Huckabee’s much like George W. Bush without the business degree.
3. If you’re a Minuteman, you’ll hate Huckabee.
To his credit, Huckabee is not as extreme as his Republican counterparts on immigration. He’s relatively sympathetic towards immigrants, and he understands that the Republican position on immigration is driven by racism.
None of this will help him with his party’s base, though–the build-a-wall-and-deport-them-all crowd won’t stand for someone like Huckabee representing them.
4. He supports a crazy tax plan.
[...]
To boost his tax cred, candidate Huckabee has eagerly signed onto FairTax, a proposal to abolish the IRS touted by Atlanta radio host Neal Boortz and at rallies nationwide. Boortz would end the income tax. Instead you’d pay a federal sales tax, and to offset resulting problems, the government would write you checks every month. How much you get depends on the number of people are in your household. And nothing else.
The cash awards, or “prebates,” are supposed to offset how hard it will be on poor people to pay more for groceries. For the middle class, it has the allure of the government paying you, instead of vice-versa, while you get to fire your accountant and throw out your paperwork, unless of course you’re a store owner, in which case you become neighborhood taxman.
[...]
But what’s important is whether FairTax itself is workable. Analysts across the political spectrum have said it isn’t. Costs could far exceed the promised 23 percent sales tax, and possible side effects include instantly creating a tax-free black market for everything, screwing up important deductions and punishing older people who’ve paid the old way.
[Emphasis added]
The “fair tax” is a sham born out of rabid anti-tax zealotry. Essentially, it calls for a national sales tax of 23% (that’s in addition to the state and local sales taxes you already pay) on all goods and services. To offset the massive cost the poor and middle class would pay, the government gives money to families based on their size. Of course, this doesn’t take into account how much a family actually spends–if a family has higher-than-normal expenses, such as a medical emergency (yes, nedical services are taxed 23% under this plan), they have to absorb those costs themselves.
It’s a Ron Paul-quality idea– an unworkable scheme that sounds good on the stump but would never work in real life. Our tax system certainly needs reform, but it doesn’t need to be thrown in the garbage in favor of some crazy right-wing gimmick.
5. If you enjoyed the Terri Schiavo case, you’ll love the Huckabee administration.
[...]
[H]e grabbed national headlines with a governor’s intervention that year to block the state from paying $419 for a retarded 15-year-old girl’s abortion, her pregnancy stemming from being raped by her stepfather on a camping trip.
Huckabee held up Medicaid payment for the operation. He claimed his hands were tied by the state constitution, Amendment 68, which prevented underwriting of abortions unless the mother’s life was endangered. The Supreme Court had thrown arguments from Christian Right governors like these out before. But Huck held to his guns, which threatened to end the $900 million annual agreement with Washington that gave his state medical money, so long as it played by federal rules.
A compromise was finally reached in which private money footed the bill.
Yes, Mike Huckabee threatened to deny the people of Arkansas $900 million a year worth of health care to prevent just one abortion. If that cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face politics sounds like your thing, by all means consider Huckabee your guy.
Huckabee has some eyebrow-raising momentum in Iowa, and he’s most frequently mentioned as the Republican vice-presidential front runner. His extreme conservative credentials may be enough to balance out the newfound, wishy-washy conservatism of candidates like Romney and Giuliani, but that doesn’t change the fact that Mike Huckabee is a right-wing extremist who belongs nowhere near the White House.
(And the article doesn’t even get into Huckabee’s record of pay-for-play corruption as Governor of Arkansas).
UPDATE: Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has a lot more here. This piece does spend some time talking about Huckabee’s disturbing hand-in-the-cookie-jar politics back in Arkansas.
