GOP's War on Reality: Not Winning and Not Not-Losing

The image of Charlie Sheen, wild-eyed and overly-animated, announcing he's "Winning!" keeps popping into my head. It's not the freshest pop culture refrence in the world, but I suppose we aren't responsible for what our memories serve up in our idle moments. It's not even accurate; Sheen's "Winning!" quote came from a tweet, not an interview, so I have no idea what he looked like when he entered it into a smart phone. Still, it's there: a lunatic with eyes like saucers, circling down in a smoking tailspin, convinced he was on his way to glorious victory, announcing he was "winning!"

What generally gets me thinking about Sheen are stories like this:

National Journal: The two parties are portraying the stalemate over the federal budget and health reform as a titanic clash of principle, but a plurality of Americans believes that causing political problems for President Obama is now the GOP's top priority in Washington, the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll has found.

Respondents didn't view Washington Democrats' motivations quite so cynically, but even so, when the poll asked the public to rank that party's priorities, causing problems for congressional Republicans finished second, only behind reducing health care costs.

Meanwhile, as polls still consistently show that creating jobs remains task one for most Americans, only about one in seven adults in the United Technologies/Congressional Connection survey identified it as the highest priority for either party in Washington.

I suppose the bad rap Democrats are getting here is a result of false equivalency in the media, combined with story after story about the "partisan divide." People are well aware that the parties are less inclined to work together than in the past, but they may not know that -- for Democrats, at least -- it's because they're not very open to standing aside while Republicans engage in open cruelty with a War on the Poor. For Republicans, the motivation seems to be sore loserism and a desire to create failures for Democrats that can be used in political campaigns.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

On Govt. Shutdown, GOP Represents the Lunatic Fringe

When I first read about the poll, I completely dismissed it as ridiculously inaccurate.

ThinkProgress: ...[T]he vast majority of Americans still don’t want Congress to delay or defund the health reform law, according to the results from a new tracking poll.

The Morning Consult group finds that just seven percent of voters support delaying or defunding Obamacare. On the other hand, 39 percent of voters want Congress to either let the law take effect or expand the law even further. Another 29 percent think that Congress should work on making improvements to Obamacare, but ultimately leave the law in place. By a two to one margin, the poll’s respondents said “the results from the 2012 presidential election represented a referendum on moving forward with the Affordable Care Act.”

In a memo regarding the new results, the Morning Consult group notes that voters have ultimately been “unmoved by three months of the defund argument.”

That 7% pro-defund/delay Obamacare percentage seems to me to be ridiculously low. But a redditor linked to a CNN poll [pdf] to point out something that's been true from the gitgo -- adding the Obamacare supporters with the people who think it isn't liberal enough results in a clear majority.

Republican "government takeover" messaging must be an extremely sour note to the majority of Americans.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Tape Shows Benghazi 'Scandal' Kept Artificially Alive by Far Right Activists

About a week ago, President Obama mentioned "phony scandals" that were drawing attention and effort away from the real work Washington needs to do to rebuild the economy. "With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals," he said in a speech on the economy at Knox College, "Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am here to say this needs to stop... Our focus must be on the basic economic issues that the matter most to you -- the people we represent."

Those remarks became a minor scandal in itself, the daily worst thing ever! we've all become so familiar with. The unceasingly outraged right were outraged at the outrageousness of this latest outrage. "It is dismissive. It is insulting. It is minimizing. It's not validating the concerns that people have," Rep. Michele Bachmann said, as if validating unfounded concerns was something anyone should be interested in doing.

A lot of critics ran to the Benghazi story -- although the president didn't mention it directly. People died, they said, did they make those deaths up?

Well, no. They didn't make up the deaths, just the controversy over them. New evidence shows a concentrated effort between GOP leadership and conservative activists to turn a foreign policy tragedy into a "scandal" that was supposed to rock the presidency.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

If the Right Doesn't Like Being Suspected of Terrorism, They Should Stop Talking Like Terrorists

I’m not sure how to start this one, but I know where I want to go with it. So let’s just jump right in.

Associated Press: FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack _ or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home.

The FBI said "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Rogers, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched a mobile home he’s associated with and found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms, according to a court affidavit.

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports via Twitter that the FBI told him Buford is a "militia type" -- meaning one of those rightwing extremist domestic terrorists we’ve all been assured are imaginary. And that’s enough to trigger a whine from the right. The wingnut blog Jammie Wearing Fool would like to inform you that the real victim here is the Tea Party.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

The GOP's Religious Fanatic Problem

It wouldn't be an easy case to make to claim that the religious right is not one of the Republican Party's biggest problems right now. The best example of this would be Todd Akin, who basically threw away a senate race by offering bizarre theories about rape. It's easy to forget that he had no shortage of defenders. And he had those defenders because those theories weren't something he'd cooked up on his own, but are part of a huge steaming pile of medical misinformation about abortion coming from Christian conservatives. Among the more common lies are that abortion causes breast cancer, that it leads to depression and suicide, and that abortion is a medically dangerous procedure. For such supposedly strict adherents to Christianity, abortion opponents tend to be shameless liars.

And it's not just limited to abortion. Pretty much all of the Republican Party's War on Women moves have been religiously motivated. And they're falling behind the mainstream on other issues as well, such as support for the LGBT community and marriage equality. As our nation becomes more and more diverse, it becomes more and more tolerant by necessity. It also becomes less and less Christian -- specifically, less of a very specific, deeply intolerant, and deep pocketed strain of Christianity.

And the Republican Party establishment may be beginning to notice that.

Buzzfeed:

Some leaders of the religious right are openly worried this week after a sprawling 98-page report released by the Republican National Committee on how the party can rebuild after its 2012 implosion made no mention of the GOP's historic alliance with grassroots Christian "value voters."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Is There GOP Life After CPAC?

At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next. Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago -- meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President. Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.
-Republican National Committee's "Growth and Opportunity Project" report.

By now, it's no secret that the GOP is a party with problems. While many reports focus primarily on Republican outreach to Latino or women voters, the fact is that the party has alienated Americans across the board. The list of demographic groups Republicans have either lost by actually attacking them or merely by ignoring them is far, far too long to post. Listing the demographic left to them is just as informative, if much more concise: middle-aged straight, white Evangelical males. The end.

The Republican Party is in deep trouble and everyone knows it. They can't hope to win the White House without radically reforming. And, since they're one appointment away from losing the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, that means real trouble for a conservative agenda that relies more and more on judicial activism. They could conceivably lose that SCOTUS majority before the next election. But it gets a lot more likely if they lose the presidency in 2016. On the presidential side, even in normal circumstances, a Democrat winning 2016 puts 2020 in danger, through the advantage given by incumbency alone. Add in unresolved demographic issues and defeating a Democratic incumbent in 2020 would be an exercise in futility. Especially without a Supreme Court willing to hand Republicans Citizens United-type advantages.

Enter the Republican National Committee's "Growth and Opportunity Project," a 100-page report recommending major reforms to the Republican Party in advance of the 2016 elections.

"When Republicans lost in November, it was a wake-up call. And in response I initiated the most public and most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in prepared remarks in advance of a Monday morning speech at the National Press Club. "As it makes clear, there’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement."

There's only one hitch: conservatives, especially those in the base, hate change.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Making it Easy for Terrorists to Arm Themselves

Most times, sweeping efforts at change have unintended consequences. When a thread is deeply woven into our society, pulling it out will almost inevitably unravel parts of the tapestry we didn't intend to. But rarely does that unintended consequence demonstrate the need for the change that caused it in the first place. A new report demonstrates this phenomenon.

The Guardian:

The number of anti-government, far-right extremist groups has soared to record levels since 2008 and they are becoming increasingly militant, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It says the number of groups in the “Patriot” movement stood at 1,360 in 2012, up from 149 in 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president, an increase of 813%. The report said the rise was driven by opposition to Obama and the “spluttering rage” over federal attempts at gun control.

Those who were identified as “militia” groups or the paramilitary wing of the Patriot movement, numbered 321, up from 42 in 2008, the SPLC said in its report.

Concern over a “truly explosive growth” of groups on the radical right, along with a rise in domestic terrorist plots, has prompted the SPLC to write to US attorney general Eric Holder and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, warning of the potential for domestic terrorism and urging them create a new, inter-agency task force to assess whether it has adequate resources to deal with it.

So here's the thing: because of our insanely loose gun laws, we're pretty much arming the very terrorists who want to kill us. If that strikes you as flabbergastingly stupid, that's because it is.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Sequestration, the March Hare, and the Mad Tea Party

It's Sequester Day, America. The worst holiday so far this year. Still, we should make the best of it. Other special days have mascots -- Santa Claus, pilgrims, Jack-O'-Lanterns, etc. -- so I propose that Sequester Day be celebrated under the lunatic grin of the March Hare. The mascot is pretty perfect; a participant in the Mad Tea Party, completely insane, and -- of course -- it's March.

You see, there's nothing sane about any of this. The last time we celebrated this holiday was not a year ago, but just back in January, when it was known by a different name: the fiscal cliff. We went over the cliff a little bit, Republicans lost their nerve, and the crisis was avoided... Well, not avoided so much as kicked down the road until today. The crisis was very much not avoided, as the mad March Hare reminds us. We merely banned the nickname "fiscal cliff" from our national vocabulary, cut some deals to reschedule the whole thing, and now we refer to it by it's more formal name, sequestration. It the same stupid self-laid trap, we've just all agreed to pretend it's a new one. It's mad, mad I say -- frantabulousy, craptastically, thingdubitably, deliciously mad!

And no one better embodies the true spirit of the March Hare better than the House Republican caucus. Left is right, up is down, right is wrong, and Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

CBS News:

...House Speaker John Boehner has said he's done negotiating. The House, Boehner says, has twice passed legislation that would undo the sequester, and should not have pass a third bill before the Democrat-controlled Senate "gets off their ass and passes it once." He has also stated that Republicans will not play ball on new tax revenue, telling the president, "You got your tax increase; it's time to cut spending here in Washington."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

A Serious Blow to the GOP's Rebranding Effort

After months of soul-searching and wandering the wilderness, the Republican Party has decided it needs to change. Well, not change really, so much as rebrand. After losing every minority group -- plus women as a whole -- to the Democratic Party in their quest to unseat Barack Obama, it's become clear that the infamous, racist "southern strategy" is finally dead, dead, dead. No longer are the votes of white Christian males alone enough to elect anyone to national office. It's now clear that "angry white guy vs. the world" is a fight in which the world will now come out on top, every time. Unfortunately for the GOP, that rebranding effort is scheduled to unravel in the middle of March. Then it will become clear (probably to everyone but the Republican faithful) that rebranding is a hopeless effort -- as is real change. In fact, the great unraveling has already begun.

NationalJournal:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was not invited to speak at the annual CPAC conference this year because he broke with conservatives on key issues over the past year, according to American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas.

Cardenas, whose group organizes the conference, wrote in an e-mail to National Journal that while CPAC was “proud” to invite Christie last year based on his record of balancing the budget and taking on teachers unions, Christie’s record over the past year is far less conservative.

“CPAC is like the all-star game for professional athletes; you get invited when you have had an outstanding year,” Cardenas said. “Hopefully he will have another all-star year in the future, at which time we will be happy to extend an invitation. This is a conservative conference, not a Republican Party event.”

For those new to all this, CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference, a yearly convention that basically serves as the rightwing crackpot prom. It's a big, boiling pot of extremists of every stripe -- racists, anti-abortion zealots, homophobes, talk radio hosts, birthers, people who see Communists behind every potted palm, gun nuts, Islamophobes, etc. For obvious reasons, I tend to refer to it as the Crazy People's Action Conference -- and it is poised to set the effort to paint a kinder, friendlier face on the GOP back to square one, if not into negative territory.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Wayne LaPierre's Horror Show Vision for America

Why do people need access to an unlimited number of assault weapons, endless crates of ammo, and magazines of every imaginable capacity, while being able to dodge a background check by buying it all at a gun show? According to the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, it's because the United States is a blasted hellscape, soon to become even worse. "Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals," writes La Pierre in an op-ed at the reliably loopy Daily Caller. "These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that."

Hey Wayne, you forgot the Zombie Apocalypse.

I can boil this all down for you pretty easily; we all need guns, because people are pouring over our open southern border and setting up gangs and being al Qaeda (because Obama's not doing anything about them lawless mezkins, you know. He wants to give them amnesty). Pretty soon, the entire country will be like Brooklyn after Hurricane Sandy, with looting and killing and who knows what all, because Obama's bankrupting 'murika so bad that we won't be able to afford any police and criminals will run wild, seeking out the unarmed to prey on and that could be your family and do you want that? Well, do you? For the sweet love of God, you need a gun OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!

Yes, it really is that racist and paranoid and partisan and cowardly. If this is what's going on in the average NRA member's head, they totally shouldn't be allowed to have firearms. They would be quite literally insane. If there are any NRA members out there reading this, is this really the way you want to be portrayed to everyone else? Because this is the stereotype: a nut who's so afraid of the dark that he needs lots and lots of guns to shoot all the monsters. "Lapierre sounds more every day like a parody of himself: a hysterical old man who started out yelling at kids to get off his lawn and now has barricaded himself indoors with five years worth of canned food and shooting irons," Ed Kilgore comments.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Nugent SOTU Invite Not Helping the Gun Lobby's Cause

It probably won't surprise anyone too much to learn that Republicans in congress own more guns than their Democratic counterparts. More than twice as many GOP congress critters own firearms than dems -- 119 to 46. This probably has as much, if not more, to do with demographics than ideology. Republicans tend to be elected from more rural districts, where hunting and fishing are common pastimes. Democrats tend to come from more urban districts, where they really don't have a lot of use for a firearm.

Still, Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman might want to tread a little lightly for a bit, because I doubt his heavily-armed colleagues are too awfully happy with him right now. At a time when polling shows a vast majority in support of gun control, Stockman has invited a Motor City motormouth who vehemently opposes regulation to be his guest at tonight's State of the Union Address. And said motormouth is promising to run his mouth.

Raw Story:

Conservative rocker Ted Nugent says that the media underestimates him so he will “dominate” them and the “lies of the left” following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) on Monday announced that he had invited Nugent to attend the annual speech, even though the pro-gun activist had been investigated by the Secret Service for threatening the life of the president.

Speaking to KFYI talk radio host Mike Broomhead on Monday, Nugent said that he would attend the speech “knowing that everything President Obama ever said has been a masterful scam – a masterful smoke-and-mirrors deceit, fraud, scam from hell.”

That ought to go well.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Hillary Clinton and Republicans' Post-Logical Worldview

Today is the day that Hillary Clinton will no longer be Secretary of State. No more globehopping behind a desk bolted to the deck of a C-17. That's all John Kerry's job now. He'll probably do the job just as ably, but frankly, I don't see him wearing it as well.

But we tend to be remembered best for the last time someone saw us, which means that Clinton's name will most likely bring to mind her final appearance before the senate, where she slapped back grandstanding Republican know-nothings intent on cashing in on a tragedy in Benghazi, Libya. Many of those Republicans probably wish that memory would fade into history, but Clinton's not done with them quite yet.

In an interview with the Associated Press (her final interview as Secretary of State) Hillary Clinton revisited the Benghazi hearing and had unkind things to say -- not only about those she put in their place, but of Republicans in general.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is leaving office with a slap at critics of the Obama administration's handling of the September attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. She told The Associated Press that critics of the administration's handling of the attack don't live in an "evidence-based world" and their refusal to "accept the facts" is unfortunate and regrettable for the political system.

[...]

"I was so unhappy with the way that some people refused to accept the facts, refused to accept the findings of an independent Accountability Review Board, politicized everything about this terrible attack," she said. "My job is to admit that we have to make improvements and we're going to."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

The NRA Exists to Sell Guns and Ammo. Period

Yesterday, Public Policy Poll released numbers showing that the National Rifle Association's favorability had slipped into negative territory. It was close -- 42% positive vs. 45% negative -- but PPP reported that this represented a "10 point net decline in the NRA's favorability" compared to their numbers before NRA President Wayne LaPierre's disastrous press conference. You remember, the one where he revealed he was insane. The issue is dragging House Republicans' numbers down as well.

What the NRA desperately needs is to change their image from a collection of trigger-happy psychopaths with a gun fetish -- which is what they are -- to an organization of levelheaded protectors of freedom -- which is what they pretend to be. The problem is that, being a collection of trigger-happy psychopaths with a gun fetish, they have absolutely no idea what the hell "levelheaded" looks like. As a result, they stage PR nightmares like this, reported by NPR:

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband, Mark Kelly, have formed a political action committee to support prevention of gun violence. The announcement came Tuesday, the second anniversary of the mass shooting in Tucson that left six dead and wounded 13, including Giffords.

Churches and fire stations around the city rang bells in memory of the victims and in commemoration of other mass shootings since Tucson.

The Tucson Police Department also held a gun buyback Tuesday. Police want to destroy the 206 firearms turned in to them. But the National Rifle Association says that would violate Arizona law.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Meet the Newtown Truthers

I'm a little stuck as to how to start this thing, so I'll just throw the whole bunch of crazy at you right off the bat:

Sun Sentinel, Florida:

A communication professor known for conspiracy theories has stirred controversy at Florida Atlantic University with claims that last month's Newtown, Conn., school shootings did not happen as reported — or may not have happened at all.

Moreover, James Tracy asserts in radio interviews and on his memoryholeblog.com. that trained "crisis actors" may have been employed by the Obama administration in an effort to shape public opinion in favor of the event's true purpose: gun control.

"As documents relating to the Sandy Hook shooting continue to be assessed and interpreted by independent researchers, there is a growing awareness that the media coverage of the massacre of 26 children and adults was intended primarily for public consumption to further larger political ends," writes Tracy, a tenured associate professor of media history at FAU and a former union leader.

In another post, he says, "While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described."

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Assault Rifles are Different in More Than Just Appearance

If the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer serves any useful purpose at all, it's to prove conclusively that the American Family Association is a hate group. His views on the subject of homosexuality are pretty much identical to those of Fred Phelps and Phelps' thankfully small hate cult, the Westboro Baptist Church. The only real difference between Phelps and Fischer is that Phelps is willing to use the word "fag" and to protest funerals. They disagree on method and there the difference ends.

But Fischer's opinions aren't limited to criticisms of the Homosexual Menace. He believes he's Big King Expert on just about any subject under the sun, so long as there's a conservative take on it. Like his criticisms of the LGBT community, these other opinions are completely ridiculous. When it comes to identifying idiotic conservative opinion, Bryan Fischer is the low-hanging fruit. The worst of the religious right, he makes Pat Robertson look like a hippy.

I point all of this out because Fischer said something stupid yesterday. This should come as no surprise. But, as so often the case, Fischer's simply repeating a conservative talking point he'd likely heard from someone else. The reason Fischer's such an easy target is because he doesn't waste a lot of time dressing up conservative arguments to make them more palatable. He puts them bluntly, offering right wing talking points up in all their naked stupidity. I'm not picking on Fischer specifically, but rather the argument he so helpfully distills.

Raw Story:

“Whoever controls the language is going to control the debate,” Fischer explained in a recent radio broadcast obtained by Right Wing Watch on Monday. “They picked the word ‘assault weapon’ to make it sound bad, to make it sound mean. They’re trying to say the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons.”

CONTINUE TO POST>>

GOP Crazies Tell GOP Crazies to Stop Being So Crazy

It's a case of the message being correct, but delivered by a perfectly inappropriate messenger. As Republicans sort through the rubble left behind by the 2012 election cycle, they're beginning to divide into two camps: "we've got to stop being so danged crazy!" and "we weren't even close to crazy enough." It's pretty clear who's right here. After all, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and Allen West didn't lose their races because everyone thought they were big ol' flaming liberals. They lost because their electorates were obviously tired of rightwing frootloops.

The problem with this intra-party division is that one group bleeds over into the other. Crazy people are demanding other crazy people stop being so darned crazy.

Politico:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday called on Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich.

In his first interview since his party’s electoral thumping last week, Jindal urged Republicans to both reject anti-intellectualism and embrace a populist-tinged reform approach that he said would mitigate what exit polls show was one of President Barack Obama’s most effective lines of attack against Mitt Romney.

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Conservatives Learn the Exact Wrong Lesson

Ta-Nehisi Coates has been putting in some really stellar work over at The Atlantic for a while now, but he really deserves some sort of headline award for his post, "Hippies Wander Into the Lions' Den, Maul Lions." In it, he points out that crazy lefty ideas like marriage equality and marijuana legalization were big winners Tuesday night. Issues that the Republican Party thought were fairly safely on their side and only fringey nutjob politics turned out not to be so safe at all. The right had laughed at these things as weak and crazy liberal goofiness -- right up until weak and crazy liberal goofs cleaned their freakin' clock. This was not an election in which rock-ribbed conservatism was endorsed by the electorate. No, this was an election where barefoot, who-cares-who-you-love, tofu-chewing, pot-smoking, Prius-driving, gender-neutral Occupy Wall Street types smacked the rightwing stupid[er].

It was, in Coates' words, "one of the most progressive nights in American history, and arguably the most progressive night in American history in some 40 years."

Which makes this reasoning a little hard to figure:

The Hill:

Conservative leaders on Wednesday lashed out at Mitt Romney, saying his attempts to paint himself as a centrist and hide his principles cost him the presidency.

They vowed to wage a war to put the Tea Party in charge of the Republican Party by the time it nominates its next presidential candidate.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

All Things to All People, President to None

Mitt Romney is now reduced to begging people to believe he gives a crap. Limping along with a self-inflicted wound across 47% of its body, the Romney campaign has released a new ad assuring America that their candidate isn't a psychopath and is capable of human emotion. "Compassionate conservatism" again enters the conversation and again causes some to ask why the word "compassionate" must be added to the word "conservatism." Modern conservatives tend to leave the compassion out of their politics. Remember how terrible they argued empathy was?

Just as Republicans apparently prefer unfeeling automatons as judges, who'll hand down verdicts and rulings without caring whose lives they ruin, so they apparently (or at least naturally) prefer the same sort of robotic coldness in their politicians. Consider their love for "tough talkers" who tell "hard truths" and "make the tough decisions." You know, guys like Paul Ryan. What they're really saying in all this is that they need people who'll do what they think needs to be done and who don't care who they offend or screw over. The emotionless psychopath is the perfect conservative leader, just as it's the perfect conservative judge.

And that fact, combined with Mitt Romney's current emo-trouble, brings up a very interesting question: can a candidate appeal to the Tea Party base and the general electorate and go on to win national office? So far, that's looking like a no. Romney had to go behind the scenes to rip on freeloaders and welfare queens. Now that it's right out there, his big chore is convincing everyone he didn't mean it. He's even throwing the anti-healthcare reform people under the bus.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

Defending a Con Man's Right to Run a Con

If the honor wasn't already taken by wingnut blogger Jim Hoft, fellow wingnut blogger Glenn Reynolds would be a solid contender for the title of Internet's Dumbest Man. They both deal in histrionic dishonesty and over-the-top fake outrage, aiming their posts straight at the most gullible, paranoid, and idiotic readers on the web. If their websites went dark overnight, the world would be a much less stupid place.

But, like Hoft, Reynolds serves a purpose -- both are excellent examples of just how insane the right wing in this country has become and both of these would-be Glenn Becks demonstrate the strident, limitless idiocy that characterizes the wingnut blogosphere. If I were to write a counter post for every stupid and just plain wrong post just one of these two morons wrote, I would never post anything else -- there are only so many hours in a day. So it's not my intention to straighten out the readers of this Reynolds post, but rather to show just how unfathomably stupid those readers must actually be. Anyone who joins in on the hero-worship of known con artist and meth cook Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is a proven idiot, but this goes far beyond that.

Long story short, Reynolds believes (or pretends to believe -- I'll take him at his word and assume he's dumb enough to believe it) that President Obama must resign because of this:

By sending -- literally -- brownshirted enforcers to engage in -- literally -- a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated [his oath of office]. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.

He won’t resign, of course. First, the President has the appreciation of free speech that one would expect from a Chicago Machine politician, which is to say, none. Second, he’s not getting any pressure. Indeed, the very press that went crazy over Ari Fleischer’s misrepresented remarks seems far less interested in the actions of an administration that I repeat, literally sent brown-shirted enforcers to launch a midnight knock on a filmmaker’s door.

But Obama’s behavior -- and that of his enablers in the press -- has laid down a marker for those who are paying attention. By these actions he is, I repeat, unfit to hold office. I hope and expect that the voters will agree in November.

CONTINUE TO POST>>

If Only the Party Could Keep Republicans Away From Their Own Convention

I'm about to write a sentence I never though anyone would ever write: I was reading an article in the New York Times and came across a quote from Dan Quayle that made a lot of sense.

“The Republican Party needs to re-establish its philosophy of the big tent with principles,” said Dan Quayle, the Republican former vice president. “The philosophy you hear from time to time, which is unfortunate, is one of exclusion rather than inclusion. You have to be expanding the base, expanding the party, because compared to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is a minority party.”

Think the GOP is going to start being more friendly to gays, women, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, etc. any time soon? Yeah, me neither. Which means that the brain trust who currently identify the hot button issues for Republicans are dumber than Dan Quayle. That's quite an accomplishment -- and not a good one.

The article highlights the biggest problem facing the Republican Convention. No, it's not tropical storm Isaac. It's the fact that the average Republican voter might show up and spoil everything.

[Many GOP leaders] said they were concerned about the crosscurrents that have churned the party, particularly since the emergence of the Tea Party movement three years ago. And on Sunday, thousands who supported the presidential campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas rallied here to challenge what they view as business as usual among Republicans.

CONTINUE TO POST>>