Rubes

I guess I was the only one who saw this coming.

“They put the campaign together like all the other Perry campaigns: raise a bunch of money, don’t worry about the [media coverage], don’t worry about debates and buy the race on TV,” said a top Perry official. “You have to be a total rube to think a race for president is the same as a race for governor.”

I get that the national media would've been easily taken in by the Secessionist, but remain baffled that Texas-based politicos were bullish on his chances when he entered the race.

The only path to victory for him was to, a la Palin, skip the debates and not give interviews -- which is exactly what they've done in Texas for years. And when those restrictions weren't put in place, it didn't take long for him to start babbling about Ponzi schemes and lynching Ben Bernanke.

Game over.

Yes, Glenn Reynolds lies.

Duh.

Also love that Heritage foundation deficit chart Putz was obsessively posting for a while that ends the Bush presidency in 2008.

HAHAHA Obama's not an American citizen HAHAHAHA.

The Romney boys are such entitled little assholes.

Keeping it classy at Fox.

Speechless.

Pointless polling.

The only thing this poll shows is that Republicans and the right-wing media are much better at consistently and forcefully screaming "liberal" and "far-left" than Democrats are at calling Republicans "radical" and "far-right."

If you poll issue by issue, this doesn't happen. Does anyone seriously believe Ron Paul is closer to the median voter than Barack Obama?

One thing it reminds future Democratic presidents is that, no matter how "centrist" they govern -- they will always be labeled as a "liberal" and "out of the mainstream" uniformly by the right.

Clinton for veep?

Normally, I'd ignore a rumor like this from a pundit, but Reich is pretty connected.

Not sure it matters. Unemployment keeps nudging down and the clown show that is the GOP keeps screwing up.

Flu season sucks.

Whatever I've got isn't going away. Any suggested remedies for the nastiest head cold ever?

Meanwhile, I still think Paul is going to win in Iowa, because his supporters don't seem to care about the racist newsletters and crazy positions.

The fiscally responsible, anti-government crusader.

Nice work if you can get it.

Extended holiday hiatus, plus virus ickiness.

Hence the non-posting.

But here's a great read on Ron Paul.

Jesus weeps.

Blessed are the grifters.

Tax cuts are not stipends.

Krauthammer:

When George McGovern campaigned on giving every household $1,000, he was laughed out of town as a shameless panderer. President Obama is doing exactly the same — a one-year tax holiday that hands back about $1,000 per middle-class family — but with a little more subtlety.

So, the Bush tax cuts were "wealth redistribution" for the rich?

The neocons come out against Paul.

WSJ:

Hear Dr. Paul on the subject of the 9/11 terror attacks—an event, he assures his audiences, that took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions. True, we've heard the assertions before. But rarely have we heard in any American political figure such exclusive concern for, and appreciation of, the motives of those who attacked us—and so resounding a silence about the suffering of those thousands that the perpetrators of 9/11 set out so deliberately to kill.

Does Rabinowitz think al Qaeda attacked the US for some other reason besides our foreign policy in the Middle East? That they did it because they hate our freedoms?

Understanding your enemy is the first obligation of war. Not, apparently, to neocons.

Elitism

Klein:

Is it elitist to expect that a candidate for President of the United States have a passing familiarity with the English language?

Yes.

The latest version of "Obama's a radical socialist."

Again, it does seem strange that the Republicans are running against an Obama that exists only in their little right-wing brains.

Opposing whatever Democrats want, updated daily.

Since that's their MO, it's not surprising at all that Republicans "lost the tax issue to Obama."

Republicans don't care about the "Lie of the Year" -- so why should Democrats?

I'm a bit puzzled by all the hand-wringing over the totally meaningless PolitiFact stuff.

As I've pointed out before, until PoltiFact's "lies" are recognized and enforced by the legacy media -- that is, until NBC or CBS or CNN or the NYT says, "Sorry, you lied about this -- you can't come back on the air or in print until you correct the record" -- any designation by PolitiFact is effectively meaningless.

There is absolutely no for Republicans to stop lying about stuff. They haven't stopped saying "death panels" or "government takeover" over the past two years, despite winning PolitiFact's award.

Pissing in the wind.

Teasing the rubes.

That's just mean.

Tea Party = "Bush Republican"

More evidence that "Tea Party" was just a quick and dirty rebrand.

Glenn Reynolds: Obama might be stupid.

I'm shocked, shocked:

I have to say that the evidence for Obama’s being especially bright is unclear.

But, of course, back in 2005...

HMM. MAYBE BUSH IS AS SMART AS SOME PEOPLE SAY.

The "some people" Putz is approvingly referring to is -- Assrocket.

Jeb Bush's answer to inequality: less taxes and regulation.

Hilarious.

We either can go down the road we are on, a road where the individual is allowed to succeed only so much before being punished with ruinous taxation, where commerce ignores government action at its own peril, and where the state decides how a massive share of the economy's resources should be spent.

Or we can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well: a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it.

In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

1) The current tax rates aren't "ruinous" -- they're at historic lows.

2) When was this era when individuals acted with "little restraint" that produced widespread upward mobility? Because from 1945-1975 there was lots of upward mobility -- to go with extremely high taxes and ever-expansive regulations.

3) If lower taxes and less regulations are the answer to better upward mobility, why have middle class wages been flat and wealth inequality increased since the Reagan revolution?

Bush Republicans would make great Stalinists. The revolution of lower taxes and less regulation cannot fail, comrades! It can only be betrayed!

The Dear Leader is dead.

The Axis of Evil ain't what it used to be.

St. Reagan of California

Glenn is shrill.

As media and political figures lavished him with politicized praise, there was virtually no mention of the brutal, civilian-extinguishing covert wars he waged in Central America, his funding of terrorists in Nicaragua, the pervasive illegality of the Iran-contra scandal perpetrated by his top aides and possibly himself, the explosion of wealth and income inequality ushered in by “Reagonmics” which persists today, his escalation of the racially disparate Drug War, his slashing of domestic programs for the poor accompanied by a deficit-causing build-up in the military budget, the racially-tinged (at least) attacks on welfare-queens-in-Cadillacs, the Savings & Loan crisis resulting from deregulation, his refusal even to acknowledge AIDS as tens of thousands of the Wrong People died, the training of Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and arming of the Iranian regime, the attempt to appoint the radical Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, or virtually anything else that would undermine the canonization. The country was drowned by a full, uninterrupted week of pure, leader-reverent propaganda.

Solving the bankster problem.

Marcy Wheeler has a great idea.

Nikki Haley makes a play for Sarah Palindom.

And she's pissing off El Rushbo in the process.

Making shit up.

Presidential candidates have always, to some degree, played loose with facts to make the case for their candidacy. Kennedy ran on a non-existent missile gap and Clinton accused HW Bush of coddling "Communist China."

The weird thing about Republicans today, though, is that they run on stuff Obama has never said, in any shape or form -- but, one assumes, what they imagine him to be saying in his head.

This is a particularly strange tic, especially in an era where everything every public figure says is clearly recorded for posterity.

A tribute: Hitchens beating the shit out of Sean Hannity and Ralph Reed.

And on Fox News.

"Let's hear from the Abramoff faction." Truly beautiful.

Wingnut circular firing squad.

Interesting times. The National Review once again endorses Willard -- while Rudy sticks a shiv in him and goes all in for Newt.

Butter and salt futures are doing well today.

Now we finally know what Mitt Romney considers "rich."

When Willard was asked in one of the 132 GOP debates what "rich" was -- he said,

“I don’t try and define who is rich and who is not rich,” said the former Massachusetts governor. “I want everybody in America to be rich."

O RLY?

"Newt Gingrich has wealth from having worked in government," Romney told CBS News political correspondent Jan Crawford in an interview in New York. "He's a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million dollar purchase from Tiffany's, you're not a middle class American."

Class warfare!

The Big Tent Republican Party of Hugh Hewitt's Mind

Quoth the Hewitt:

There aren't many mortal sins among conservatives, but attacking capitalism is one of them.

Not many at all!

Except:

• Saying global warming isn't a liberal hoax
• Raising taxes ever, especially on rich people
• Favoring gay marriage
• Favoring civil unions
  
• Letting gays serve openly in the military
• Being pro-choice
• Criticizing Israel
• Opposing the deportation of 14 million people (pro-SHAMNESTY!)
  
• Criticizing America (when Republicans are in charge)
• Criticizing corporations
• Defining what "rich" means
  
• Cutting defense spending
• Calling waterboarding "torture"
• Favoring universal health care
  
• Opposing Paul Ryan's plan to destroy the New Deal and Great Society
  
• Favoring anything liberals like
  

I'm sure I've missed a whole lot of stuff -- add away in comments.

UPDATE

Mr. Wonderful comes up with two more really big no-nos:

• Supporting unions.
• Supporting gun control

IOKIYAR, Richard Land edition.

Words speak louder than actions, apparently.

Newt Gingrich’s personal marital history has caused heartburn for many evangelicals. However, forgiveness, redemption, and second and third chances are part of the spiritual genetic code of evangelicals. And when Gingrich says he’s gone to God for forgiveness — and he assures an Iowa group of social conservatives that he will seek to enact all of the important planks of the social conservative agenda including a promise to “uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect to the marital bonds of others” — he goes a long way to applying Rolaids to the worried evangelicals’ heartburn.

I guess that stuff about "how can we trust him to take the Presidential oath when he couldn't keep his marital oath?" that we've heard about Democrats for years is now no longer operative.

Fraud? By banks? You don't say.

This can't be right.

A seasoned fraud investigator, Tom Borgers worked for the government in the wake of the Savings & Loans scandal, preparing and directing criminal referrals, and responsible for the recovery of multi-million dollar claims. During that time, Borgers saw hundreds of bank executives prosecuted and sent to prison, a stark contrast with what's happened in our current economic crisis.

Borgers tells Kroft that the FCIC found evidence of trillions of dollars of fraud and gross negligence, and that in the area of mortgage fraud, he found crimes committed by "mortgage originators, underwriters, banks . . . across the board." Yet still, no prosecutions . . . so far.

But...but...the financial crisis was caused by brown people who were too lazy to pay their mortgages on time.

Silly Conor.

It's always excellent news for Teabaggers.

Newt Gingrich is not Howard Dean.

I'll take incredibly lazy false equivalences for $800, Alex.

This is not 1984 and nor is it 1972 or 1964. Selecting Gingrich would be an act of unpardonable folly and a declaration that the Republican party has lost its political bearings. That's fine but it's not serious politics. Newt isn't Kerry, he's Howard Dean. (And worse than that: he's also Newt!)

Let's see.

Howard Dean was a successful, moderate, popular governor who opposed the Iraq War.

Newt Gingrich was the only Speaker of the House in US history to resign as the result of ethics violations, left politics as a hugely unpopular figure, is on his third wife and cheated on at least two of them, has spent the last decade and a half making millions as a lobbyist -- and takes lots of hugely really unpopular positions, like say, bringing back child labor.

But they're totally the same!

Newt isn't Dean. He's Jim Trafficant.

Desperation.

So funny.

Nice going, rednecks.

The invisible hand's a bitch, idiots.

Douthat: wingnuts think Gingrich will prove Obama's stupid.

I've been trying to figure out one aspect of Newt's resurgence, this belief by wingnuts that Newt will kick Obama's ass in the debates.

What do they care about debates, I thought. George W. Bush lost all three debates to Kerry, and fared only slightly better against Gore--and they spent 8 years telling us that they don't matter.

But Douthat is a native wingnut speaker and explains it to us: they're desperate to validate their belief that Obama's an idiot.

Time for the Village Republicans to panic.

The inmates are about to burn down the asylum.

Glenn Beck: if Teabaggers support Gingrich, it's because they're bigots.

No question that the Beckster is desperate for attention now that he's been banished from Faux. But calling his own fans a bunch of racists is pretty surprising.

(And of course it goes without saying that if Rachel Maddow said this, blah blah blah...)

UPDATE
Link fixed.

Right-wing victims, totally powerless against the media.

Do these idiots even know the difference between a primary and a general?

Apparently not:

It’s not just this issue, but on pretty much any issue the media is going to brutalize Gingrich and make his 1995 anal exam seem like a walk in the park. They’ve got their marching orders: Destroy Gingrich at all costs.

Damn right! Because they secretly, desperately, really really want Romney to win...who's currently polling better in head-to-head matchups vs. Obama.

Idiots.

Personal attacks? From Republicans?! You don't say.

Cornell Putz clutches his pearls:

The attacks on Newt Gingrich from the Romney campaign and it supporters in the Beltway political and media echelons have become quite personal.

The fervor reminds me not so much of a heated argument on the merits, but of a child custody proceeding in which Romney seeks to have Newt not only lose custody of his putative nomination but also be declared an unfit parent due to mental illness.

Wow, since when do Republicans engage in personal attacks and not debate the merits?

I mean its the left who accuse the president of being an anti-American, weak, dim-witted, indecisive Kenyan Marxist crypto-Muslim.

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Class warfare.

Newt Gingrich can shit all over "poor children," Herman Cain can blame the unemployed for their plight and Rick Scott can call for drug testing welfare recipients -- but it's always Democrats who engage in class warfare.

Wising up.

I guess even the Secessionist and Michele Bachmann aren't stupid enough to be mere props in padding The Donald's resume.

Anger issues.

The ongoing Republican mancrush on Donald Trump.

After The Donald beclowned himself with birtherism and subsequently crashed and burned, I admit I was a bit baffled by all the GOP ring-kissing in its wake.

Everyone who's got a pulse understands that this guy's a self-promoting asshole who knows very little about national politics and cares about absolutely nothing else but The Donald.

So -- why on Earth would you give him yet another opportunity to promote himself at your expense?

And Newt wins the K-Lo primary!

Remember this?

Litmus test for GOP nominee? John Bolton as secretary of State.

And Newt obliges.

"I would appoint John Bolton as my Secretary of State," Gingrich said, to more thunderous applause.

B. Hussein X's master plan enacted!

Damn, he's good.

Prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will no longer pursue the death penalty against former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, meaning he will spend the rest of his life in prison for gunning down a white police officer nearly 30 years ago.

Sadly No! saw this coming.

What a douche.

Tony Perkins: Jesus was a "free marketer."

A few years back, Al Franken had a great comic called "Supply Side Jesus" -- which was satire, obviously -- but not, apparently, to Tony Perkins.

Jesus rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for the last few decades: that everyone gets a trophy – equal outcomes for inequitable performance. There are winners and yes, there are losers. And wins and losses are determined by the diligence and determination of the individual.

But what about all that stuff about the "last being first and the first being last" -- not to mention all those mean things Jesus said about rich people?

A great speech.

But one he should've been making since January 2009.

Hugh Hewitt, still delusional.

Seriously?

Tens of thousands of fans of Dan Quayle live in Florida now, hundreds of thousands across the country, who remember that the Veep was the pinata for the left for a decade, and also a strong champion of family values, one of the first of a string of high-profile Republicans unfairly maligned by the in-the-bag-for-the-left MSM. His son Ben is also a rising star of the House freshmen. Quayle matters, just not to Manhattan-Beltway media elites, which is why they have been so wrong about so much of the campaign to date.

"Hundreds of thousands" of Dan Quayle fans?

See if you can guess who Newt Gingrich is talking to here.

No looking.

GINGRICH: Well, sir, you and I have always had a great relationship and I admire your courage and I admire the way in which you’ve always stood up and told the truth and I think you’ve had a huge impact as I go around the country with Tea Party folks in maximizing interest in American history and interest in the Founding Fathers and I think much of what you’ve done, you know, you and I don’t have to agree on some things to have a great deal of mutual respect and I think you’ve been a very powerful force for good and I wish you well in your new ventures.

(Answer here).

Another fragile flower billionaire against that meanie mean mean Obama.

Geez, these guys are the biggest freaking whiners on the planet.

Mr. Cooperman, a man with a rags-to-riches background who worked at Goldman Sachs for more than 25 years in the 1970s and 1980s before starting his own hedge fund, Omega Advisors, which has minted him an estimated $1.8 billion fortune, is waging a campaign against President Obama.

Last week, in a widely circulated “open letter” to President Obama that whizzed around e-mail inboxes of Wall Street and corporate America, Mr. Cooperman argued that “the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them.”

He went on to say, “To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment.”

The letter comes as President Obama is planning to give a speech on Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kan., about the economy and the middle class, following in the path of President Theodore Roosevelt, who campaigned a century ago in that very city against the wealthy and big business.

Mr. Cooperman’s complaint has less to do with the substance of taxing the wealthy than it does the president’s choice of words in promoting it, an emphasis that he says is “villainizing the American Dream.”

I'll make you a deal, Cooperman.

Obama will say lots of nice things about you while breaking up the TBTF banks, raising capital gains taxes to 35% -- and your income taxes to 50%.

How's that?

Suck it, Frank Miller.

In case you remember this wingnutty post by Frank Miller, here's an awesome response by Alan Moore.

“As far as I can see, the Occupy movement is just ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it; they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it. I’m sure if it had been a bunch of young, sociopathic vigilantes with Batman make-up on their faces, he’d be more in favour of it. We would definitely have to agree to differ on that one.”

Powerline blames the Democrats for Herman Cain's implosion.

Of course Ass Rocket does.

What happened to Herman Cain is what the Democrats intend to do to whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. They know they can’t win a debate on the economy or on President Obama’s record, so they will do everything they can to distract the voters’ attention from those matters, which should be decisive, and instead turn the focus to the GOP candidate and his or her alleged foibles. If Republican voters allow that to happen by nominating a candidate with baggage that permits the Democrats to turn him into the next Herman Cain, it is all too likely that President Obama will be re-elected, with consequences that can hardly be overestimated.

Yeah, just a couple questions.

First how many Democrats are running in the Republican primary? And second, why on Earth would Democrats try and kill a Herman Cain nomination?

David Brooks: blame those lazy, shiftless Mediterraneans for the eurozone crisis.

Bobo:

Why are nations like Germany and the U.S. rich? It’s not primarily because they possess natural resources — many nations have those. It’s primarily because of habits, values and social capital.

It’s because many people in these countries, as Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, believe in a simple moral formula: effort should lead to reward as often as possible.

People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity. Money should go to people on the basis of merit and enterprise. Self-control should be rewarded while laziness and self-indulgence should not. Community institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness.

Uh-huh.

...and more from Dean Baker.

The GOP's come a long way since Willie Horton.

Or not.

“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” Gingrich claimed.

“They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal,” he added.

Can't blame it all on the DFHs.

When this is your biggest legislative accomplishment, it's a problem:

As the US Supreme Court prepares to review President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms, more Americans want to it repealed than want to keep it, a poll released Wednesday shows.

A Gallup survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults found that 47 percent favor the repeal of healthcare reform, versus 42 percent who want the law kept in place. Eleven percent had no opinion.

It was a given that the GOP was going to make shit up and scream SOCIALISM! -- so you needed to counter that with something everyone could a) clearly understand and b) really wanted.

Not enough people understand what the bill does, or how it helps them. As Atrios says, it's a Rube Goldberg device.

Not even Frank Luntz can save them from this one.

This Luntz list of how Republicans should talk about OWS is pretty funny. My favorite:

10. Always blame Washington.

Tell them, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it's the policies over the past few years that have created this problem."

Everything was awesome until 2009! Yeah, that'll work.

BREAKING: Little Lindy kidnapped in New Jersey.

Really, ABC?

Did Michelle Bachmann have her “oops” moment?