Go Joe Go.
I agree that all most women heard was Huckabee calling them sluts, but I am pretty sure that that wasn’t his intended message. He was trying to say that Democrats think that women are sluts, but I can’t really understand why he was making that argument. Yes, I get that women are not supposed to want to have sex, but that wasn’t quite what Huckabee was saying, either.
The bottom line is that Huckabee said a bunch of words that didn’t really mean anything and the takeaway was that he is eager to have a national debate over whether a woman who uses birth control is only doing it because she can’t overcome her desire to have sex. Since 99% of women use birth control at some point in their lives, Huckabee came pretty close to insulting every women in the country.
So the RNC has voted to shorten its primary season in order to make it easier for an establishment candidate to win quickly and easily without being tarnished by the crazies that he or she must debate. Further, it would make it easier for the candidate with the most money to swamp his or her lesser funded tea party upstarts and underdogs. Unfortunately for the Republicans, I don’t think they thought this through. The plan is obviously meant to benefit Christie. But think about this. The first two contests are still the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary.
Does anyone really think Chris Christie is going to win the Iowa Caucuses against Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, or even Rick Santorum. Lets assume Rand Paul wins. That sets him up for another quick victory in New Hampshire (remember, his father came in second there in 2012). And then after that he is a run away freight train. The same logic applies for Cruz, though I don’t necessarily see him winning New Hampshire. And now with a tighter and shorter primary calendar, there is less time for the establishment candidate to smash these upstart underdogs down in a debate, for there are going to be fewer debates.
Rick Moran at the American Thinker agrees:
These changes will also have unintended consequences – like conservatives may coalesce around one candidate early. That will be difficult but if successful, it could be curtains for the establishment candidate. The last two election cycles, McCain and Romney were successful because it took months for candidate attrition to lead to a one on one match up with a conservative. While the right was fighting it out among themselves, McCain and Romney kept piling up the delegates until they had a prohibitive lead. Imagine if the right were to choose one candidate to support before the primaries even begin?
Further, Cruz and Paul will not be starved for cash like Santorum was. I see these changes as almost guaranteeing a tea party nominee in 2016, especially now that the aura of invulnerability is gone from Christie.
If, as has been widely reported, President Obama devotes much of his State of the Union address to inequality, everyone should be cheering him on. They won’t, of course. Instead, he will face two kinds of sniping. The usual suspects on the right will, as always when questions of income distribution come up, shriek “Class warfare!” But there will also be seemingly more sober voices arguing that he has picked the wrong target, that jobs, not inequality, should be at the top of his agenda.
Here’s why they’re wrong.
First of all, jobs and inequality are closely linked if not identical issues. There’s a pretty good although not ironclad case that soaring inequality helped set the stage for our economic crisis, and that the highly unequal distribution of income since the crisis has perpetuated the slump, especially by making it hard for families in debt to work their way out.
Moreover, there’s an even stronger case to be made that high unemployment — by destroying workers’ bargaining power — has become a major source of rising inequality and stagnating incomes even for those lucky enough to have jobs.
With inequality and economic populism expected to be central to Obama’s State of the Union speech and Dem campaigns in the midterms, expect Republicans to argue Dems are wielding a familiar “class warfare” weapon to distract from the failure of the ”Obummer economy.”
But a new Pew poll digs into public opinion on inequality in a way I haven’t seen before, and it suggests Dems are on solid political ground with this focus. Large majorities think the gap between the rich and ”everyone else” has grown (65 percent) and that government should act to reduce that gap (69 percent). This is crucial.
POLLING:
NATIONAL–PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL–CBS: 46% approve of President Obama’s job performance, up from 42% in December and 37% in November.
NATIONAL–PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL–Associated Press: 45% approve of job performance, but the President’s favorability rating has improved nine points since October, up to 58%.
KENTUCKY–MEDICAID EXPANSION UNDER OBAMACARE–Healthy Kentucky: 79% of Kentuckians, and 60% of Kentucky Republicans, approve of Democratic Governor Steve Beshear’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.