Showing posts with label gop base. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gop base. Show all posts
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Ryan Watch - A View From The Base
Aug 14th, 2012
With a little bit of a wink and a nudge from Roger Simon:
"This is what the base likes. This is what the base needs. We haven’t been this excited since McCain chose Palin. OK, bad example. We haven’t been this excited since Dole chose Kemp. OK, another bad example. We haven’t been this excited since George H.W. Bush chose Quayle. Ha! Gotcha, there.
The fact is that Paul Ryan has spent virtually his entire adult life in politics, and, therefore, is insulated from time-wasting side issues like understanding how ordinary people live.
He has seen life from the top, and the top is where you want to be. Believe us. We are the base, and we know the difference between coach and Premier Executive seating.
Does Ryan lack any real foreign policy experience? Yes. So what? How much did George W. Bush have when he plunged us into a tragic and unnecessary war for mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
But let us tell you the upside: There are a lot of people who made out like bandits on that war. They made fortunes. And they are up there flying in first class. Or on their own jets.
And that is the real lesson that any kid from Wisconsin knows: You only go around once in life, so you’ve got to grab for all the gusto you can."
With a little bit of a wink and a nudge from Roger Simon:
"This is what the base likes. This is what the base needs. We haven’t been this excited since McCain chose Palin. OK, bad example. We haven’t been this excited since Dole chose Kemp. OK, another bad example. We haven’t been this excited since George H.W. Bush chose Quayle. Ha! Gotcha, there.
The fact is that Paul Ryan has spent virtually his entire adult life in politics, and, therefore, is insulated from time-wasting side issues like understanding how ordinary people live.
He has seen life from the top, and the top is where you want to be. Believe us. We are the base, and we know the difference between coach and Premier Executive seating.
Does Ryan lack any real foreign policy experience? Yes. So what? How much did George W. Bush have when he plunged us into a tragic and unnecessary war for mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
But let us tell you the upside: There are a lot of people who made out like bandits on that war. They made fortunes. And they are up there flying in first class. Or on their own jets.
And that is the real lesson that any kid from Wisconsin knows: You only go around once in life, so you’ve got to grab for all the gusto you can."
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Final Polls Before Michigan
Feb 27th, 2012
I stand my prediction that Romney will win tomorrow. However, the race with Santorum is very tight.
HuffPo rounds up the final polling:
"Three of the five surveys, by Rasmussen Reports, Public Policy Polling (PPP) and We Ask America, show Romney ahead of Santorum by two to four percentage points. The two others, an automated poll by Mitchell Research and the one live-interviewer survey by the American Research Group (ARG), show Santorum ahead of Romney by one to two percentage points. All five show Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich running far behind. All but the ARG poll were conducted using an automated, recorded voice over the telephone."
As I have previously stated, I just don't think the Michigan base is quite as reactionary as many of the other states. If Santorum does win this thing, though, we can expect a full-on collective panic from the GOP establishment.
I stand my prediction that Romney will win tomorrow. However, the race with Santorum is very tight.
HuffPo rounds up the final polling:
"Three of the five surveys, by Rasmussen Reports, Public Policy Polling (PPP) and We Ask America, show Romney ahead of Santorum by two to four percentage points. The two others, an automated poll by Mitchell Research and the one live-interviewer survey by the American Research Group (ARG), show Santorum ahead of Romney by one to two percentage points. All five show Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich running far behind. All but the ARG poll were conducted using an automated, recorded voice over the telephone."
As I have previously stated, I just don't think the Michigan base is quite as reactionary as many of the other states. If Santorum does win this thing, though, we can expect a full-on collective panic from the GOP establishment.
Friday, February 10, 2012
George Will Vs. The GOP On Defense
Feb 10th, 2012
A few days ago, conservative columnist George Will penned a withering critique of current Republican messaging on defense. He begins with nothing less than a rebuke of the entire Iraq misadventure:
"Hours — not months, not weeks, hours — after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, vicious political factionalism and sectarian violence intensified. Many Republicans say Barack Obama's withdrawal — accompanied by his administration's foolish praise of Iraq's "stability" — has jeopardized what has been achieved there. But if it cannot survive a sunrise without fraying, how much of an achievement was it?
Few things so embitter a nation as squandered valor; hence Americans, with much valor spent there, want Iraq to master its fissures. But with America in the second decade of its longest war, the probable Republican nominee is promising to extend it indefinitely." EMPHASIS OURS
In fact, all of the GOP contenders (with the exception of Ron Paul) are now in a mad dash to outdo one another in promising more wars, longer wars and bigger wars. The situation is out of hand and these positions are dramatically at odds with the will of the people.
A few days ago, conservative columnist George Will penned a withering critique of current Republican messaging on defense. He begins with nothing less than a rebuke of the entire Iraq misadventure:
"Hours — not months, not weeks, hours — after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, vicious political factionalism and sectarian violence intensified. Many Republicans say Barack Obama's withdrawal — accompanied by his administration's foolish praise of Iraq's "stability" — has jeopardized what has been achieved there. But if it cannot survive a sunrise without fraying, how much of an achievement was it?
Few things so embitter a nation as squandered valor; hence Americans, with much valor spent there, want Iraq to master its fissures. But with America in the second decade of its longest war, the probable Republican nominee is promising to extend it indefinitely." EMPHASIS OURS
In fact, all of the GOP contenders (with the exception of Ron Paul) are now in a mad dash to outdo one another in promising more wars, longer wars and bigger wars. The situation is out of hand and these positions are dramatically at odds with the will of the people.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Santorum's Foreign Policy
Feb 9th, 2012
Daniel Larison let's him have it:
"Even though Santorum is far closer in his views to how Obama actually conducts foreign policy than Paul could ever be, he states those views with adversarial partisan contempt, which can be emotionally satisfying for voters opposed to Obama. That said, Santorum uses the usual talking points about Iran, for example, but then runs with them so far that no one outside of a limited circle of hawkish pundits and activists can listen to him without wincing. As Alex Massie said earlier, “he makes George W Bush’s record seem mild and benign,” which is what I’ve been saying for a while now. According to Santorum, Bush’s record was mostly all right, except that he thinks it wasn’t aggressive or bold enough. According to Santorum, Bush had a foreign policy that was too humble, and he aims to correct that." EMPHASIS HIS
The sudden Santorum Surge presents new and terrible risks for the establishment choice on these points. If Romney winds up at the convention without the necessary 1,144 delegates, as Philip Klein discussed yesterday, there is a distinct possibility that Mitt will have to adopt a number of Santorum's politically suicidal positions to appease the base. If the Super Delegates simply hand him the nomination, it will be ugly.
Daniel Larison let's him have it:
"Even though Santorum is far closer in his views to how Obama actually conducts foreign policy than Paul could ever be, he states those views with adversarial partisan contempt, which can be emotionally satisfying for voters opposed to Obama. That said, Santorum uses the usual talking points about Iran, for example, but then runs with them so far that no one outside of a limited circle of hawkish pundits and activists can listen to him without wincing. As Alex Massie said earlier, “he makes George W Bush’s record seem mild and benign,” which is what I’ve been saying for a while now. According to Santorum, Bush’s record was mostly all right, except that he thinks it wasn’t aggressive or bold enough. According to Santorum, Bush had a foreign policy that was too humble, and he aims to correct that." EMPHASIS HIS
The sudden Santorum Surge presents new and terrible risks for the establishment choice on these points. If Romney winds up at the convention without the necessary 1,144 delegates, as Philip Klein discussed yesterday, there is a distinct possibility that Mitt will have to adopt a number of Santorum's politically suicidal positions to appease the base. If the Super Delegates simply hand him the nomination, it will be ugly.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Will Newt Score An Upset?
Jan 30th, 2012
As tomorrow's Florida Primary approaches, the conventional wisdom is that Romney is going to blow his opposition, principally Newt Gingrich, out of the water. The latest polling shows a more than 10 point lead for Mitt. There is some truth to Newt's accusation that the Romney camp has been "carpet-bombing" that state with negative ads. The latest data shows Gingrich having been outspent 5 to 1 according to TPM:
"...the total ad spending through Tuesday in Florida by the Romney campaign and its allied super PAC, Restore Our Future, is $15,340,000. The total spending for Gingrich’s campaign and his super PAC, Winning Our Future, is $3,390,000."
I think the final tallies tomorrow could be surprising. Walter Shapiro makes the case for an upset driven by Florida's elderly GOP base:
"Up until now, Gingrich has been especially successful at appealing to the I-remember-the-invasion-of-Grenada voting bloc. In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to exit polls, there was a powerful, but little-noticed, straight-line trend—the older the voter, the higher the level of Gingrich support. Since Gingrich finished fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire, this age skew did not fit into a convenient campaign narrative. But in South Carolina, it was key to the Newtonian bomb that leveled the political landscape and sent the GOP establishment into full panic. Gingrich support in the January 21 primary rose from 28 percent among the small slice of under-30 votes to 40 percent among middle-aged Republicans to 47 percent among South Carolina voters mature enough to collect Medicare."
The GOP base is angry and fracturing. In Florida, it is also demographically older than the previous state contests.
If the eleventh hour passes prior to the casting of ballots and Newt doesn't have some extra trick up his sleeve, I think Mitt will still take it. However, I also the margins will be substantially tighter than they look right now.
As tomorrow's Florida Primary approaches, the conventional wisdom is that Romney is going to blow his opposition, principally Newt Gingrich, out of the water. The latest polling shows a more than 10 point lead for Mitt. There is some truth to Newt's accusation that the Romney camp has been "carpet-bombing" that state with negative ads. The latest data shows Gingrich having been outspent 5 to 1 according to TPM:
"...the total ad spending through Tuesday in Florida by the Romney campaign and its allied super PAC, Restore Our Future, is $15,340,000. The total spending for Gingrich’s campaign and his super PAC, Winning Our Future, is $3,390,000."
I think the final tallies tomorrow could be surprising. Walter Shapiro makes the case for an upset driven by Florida's elderly GOP base:
"Up until now, Gingrich has been especially successful at appealing to the I-remember-the-invasion-of-Grenada voting bloc. In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, according to exit polls, there was a powerful, but little-noticed, straight-line trend—the older the voter, the higher the level of Gingrich support. Since Gingrich finished fourth in both Iowa and New Hampshire, this age skew did not fit into a convenient campaign narrative. But in South Carolina, it was key to the Newtonian bomb that leveled the political landscape and sent the GOP establishment into full panic. Gingrich support in the January 21 primary rose from 28 percent among the small slice of under-30 votes to 40 percent among middle-aged Republicans to 47 percent among South Carolina voters mature enough to collect Medicare."
The GOP base is angry and fracturing. In Florida, it is also demographically older than the previous state contests.
If the eleventh hour passes prior to the casting of ballots and Newt doesn't have some extra trick up his sleeve, I think Mitt will still take it. However, I also the margins will be substantially tighter than they look right now.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Cracks Widen
Nov 27th, 2011
If you haven't yet read David Frum's blistering critique of the modern GOP in NYMag yet, you really need to:
"This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong."
Sure, Frum was booted from the club some time ago for failing to pass its tests in ideological purity. But, he is far from alone. In the last few years, David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett, Andrew Sullivan, Edward Luttwak, John Dean, Mark Zandi, Kenneth Duberstein and hundreds of other thinkers who once comprised the brain trust of American conservatism have been made to feel unwelcome for refusing to propagandize. While I certainly don't agree with Frum's declaration that conservatives got 'the big questions... right' decades ago, I will agree that they offered rational proposals and didn't try to collapse the deliberative power of the Senate.
In part, Frum's piece is a form of psychoanalysis:
"... conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too."
The cognitive dissonance Frum describes now extends to even the simplest of arguments; There are no jobs because of Obama can be followed, after a single breath, with declarations that the unemployed are lazy.
"Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation."
If you haven't yet read David Frum's blistering critique of the modern GOP in NYMag yet, you really need to:
"This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong."
Sure, Frum was booted from the club some time ago for failing to pass its tests in ideological purity. But, he is far from alone. In the last few years, David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett, Andrew Sullivan, Edward Luttwak, John Dean, Mark Zandi, Kenneth Duberstein and hundreds of other thinkers who once comprised the brain trust of American conservatism have been made to feel unwelcome for refusing to propagandize. While I certainly don't agree with Frum's declaration that conservatives got 'the big questions... right' decades ago, I will agree that they offered rational proposals and didn't try to collapse the deliberative power of the Senate.
In part, Frum's piece is a form of psychoanalysis:
"... conscious cynicism is much rarer than you might suppose. Few of us have the self-knowledge and emotional discipline to say one thing while meaning another. If we say something often enough, we come to believe it. We don’t usually delude others until after we have first deluded ourselves. Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too."
The cognitive dissonance Frum describes now extends to even the simplest of arguments; There are no jobs because of Obama can be followed, after a single breath, with declarations that the unemployed are lazy.
There are ways out using traditional conservative ideas, but, as Frum laments, the GOP is simply disinterested.
"Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation."
And that, as they say, is that.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Dominionist Watch - Bachmann's Humor Edition
Aug 29th, 2011
I swear, this year's motto really ought to be the phrase, "No, I am not making this up."
Speaking to a crowd of GOP loyalists and conservative activists in Florida this weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said this:
"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."
Her campaign spokesperson, Alice Stewart reportedly told TPM "Obviously she was saying it in jest."
Oh. Funny. Ha ha. It was a joke when you said that God caused widespread devastation and 30 deaths reported so far because He wants America to tax the rich even less and cut services to the poor even more. Got it.
It actually was a joke. A very ugly, nasty and not at all funny spectacle of a joke. A joke built on horror and pain and death. And her audience laughed... and laughed... and laughed. That's the GOP base. It's not just candidate Bachmann's judgment that is suspect.
I swear, this year's motto really ought to be the phrase, "No, I am not making this up."
Speaking to a crowd of GOP loyalists and conservative activists in Florida this weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said this:
"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."
Her campaign spokesperson, Alice Stewart reportedly told TPM "Obviously she was saying it in jest."
Oh. Funny. Ha ha. It was a joke when you said that God caused widespread devastation and 30 deaths reported so far because He wants America to tax the rich even less and cut services to the poor even more. Got it.
It actually was a joke. A very ugly, nasty and not at all funny spectacle of a joke. A joke built on horror and pain and death. And her audience laughed... and laughed... and laughed. That's the GOP base. It's not just candidate Bachmann's judgment that is suspect.
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