Tag Archives: Republican Bamboozlement

Pulling Back the Curtain on GOP Intransigence

The NYT Sunday provides great reporting on how the GOP developed a detailed plan to invoke this budget crisis just so they could derail Obamacare.  Starting with a letter that called for keeping the sequester cuts AND for defunding Obamacare, the GOP has had a scorched earth plan in place to try to get their way for most of this year:

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

This puts into better context two things that Democrats have been saying for weeks (and largely ignored by the media): 1) That they’ve already compromised by agreeing to a CR that included the sequester cuts and 2) that they’ve been ready to go to conference to negotiate a budget for 6 months — it is the House GOP who couldn’t be bothered to appoint anyone to the conference committee.

The Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation (where Obamacare was born) and their teajhadi minions are spending tons of money on a long planned effort to specifically NOT pass a budget and wait until they could hurt as many Americans as they could to try to get what they couldn’t get in the recent elections. This last week I started hearing a few stories on the highlighting how bad the false equivalence reporting that has been rampant during this shutdown. Maybe this means that the press will shine their light a little harder on the GOP who we know for certain have been waiting (and not doing their own jobs for months) to just shut down the Government to have their Obamacare tantrum.tb-cant-burn

Republicans Are No Longer the Party of Business

That is the remarkable title from an article in BloomburgBusinessweek:
No Longer the Party of Business10-4-2013

Larger businesses, which often tilt more heavily toward the GOP, are no less frustrated. It’s hard to find any organization more closely affiliated with the Republican Party than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In 2012 the business trade group spent $35,657,029 on federal elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Of that, $305,044 was spent on behalf of Democratic candidates. Last year the Chamber went further to help Republicans than it ever had by running ads directly against candidates: It spent $27,912,717 against Democrats and only $346,298 against Republicans.

All that money ensures a careful hearing when the Chamber wants something from Republicans—but it doesn’t guarantee they’ll listen. On Oct. 1, House Republicans ignored the Chamber’s pleas to keep the government running. The shutdown is costing the U.S. economy $300 million a day, according to IHS (IHS), a global market-research firm, and it’s only the latest sign suggesting that the old adage, “Republicans are the party of business,” no longer holds true. From the austerity imposed by sequestration to the refusal to reform immigration laws to the shutdown and now, as appears likely, another debt-ceiling showdown when U.S. borrowing authority expires on Oct. 17, the GOP’s actions have put a strain on one of its most valuable partners: the business community.

Probably the biggest thing that got missed in the Fed’s decision to not cut back on it’s QE activities is their determination that the biggest risk left to this economy was the dysfunction in Washington. This dysfunction doesn’t seem to stop the Chamber and business groups from buying up all of the politicians (both sides do it for real this time!) they can get. I really thought that in the last Debt Ceiling fight that the business community would be an influential voice in getting the GOP to do the right thing. And I was wrong.

The rising antigovernment sentiment within the GOP does not always conflict with the desires of the business community, especially on issues such as regulation. But the shutdown and debt ceiling are both matters where they do—and the unwillingness of Republican lawmakers to shift course underscores the diminished clout of their traditional business allies, despite the financial largesse. Asked by the Associated Press if he had heard business groups express alarm about the economic impact of a shutdown, Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California replied, “No. And it wouldn’t make any difference if I did.”

There you go. A party hell-bent on damaging all of us — even the people who are their best allies. So what happens next? Is there some line — which crossed — will get the business community to push back on these teajhadis in some serious way?

Welcome to the GOP Government Shutdown

As of today, the great government of the United States is shut down, but guess what? You can buy health insurance on the exchanges today, because it is the law today. This bit of stupidity is courtesy of the teajhadis in the House. The NYDN gives this just the right cover today:
NY_DN House of Turds

Right? And since our media seem to have forgotten how we got here with their breathless coverage of the last minute conference deal, pay attention to Senator Patty Murray:

After blocking Senate Democrats’ attempts to start a budget conference 18 times over the past six months, Republicans are now scrambling to start a conference committee with mere minutes to go before a government shutdown. This is just the latest absurd and desperate attempt by Speaker Boehner to delay the inevitable–bringing a clean continuing resolution to the floor for Democrats and Republicans to vote on–and to continue pushing the country toward a completely unnecessary government shutdown. If Republicans were truly serious about avoiding a crisis they would pass the Senate’s short-term funding bill to remove the threat of a government shutdown immediately. We won’t negotiate while Republicans are threatening families and the economy with a crisis.

Got that? In the past 6 months the GOP-controlled House has reused to appoint anyone to a conference committee to has out a budget. SIX MONTHS. But last night all they could come up with was a conference committee for the CR. I’m calling bullshit on the GOP and I’m calling bullshit on the media types who still can’t get the context of this thing right.

GOP Bamboozlement on SNAP Benefits

SNAP benefits have been in the news over the past few weeks as Congress tries to pass a Farm Bill. The Senate passed a bill that made some cuts to the SNAP program, while the House separated SNAP from the Farm Bill and proceeded to cut SNAP so that 5 million people would no longer be eligible for food support. The GOP ( including the locals who don’t have much to say other than to repeat the talking points sent to them each day, and the media, unfortunately) are pushing messaging that tries to link the SNAP program with economic recovery. This messaging ignores some key points:

  1. Most SNAP participants were children or the elderly. Nearly half (45 percent) of participants were under age 18 and nearly 9 percent were age 60 or older.  These aren’t people who are going to be in the job market.
  2. Many SNAP Participants Have Jobs. More than 30 percent of SNAP households had income in 2011, and 41 percent of total participants lived in a household with earnings.
  3. Number of SNAP Participants Has Been Increasing Since the 1990’s.  From the USDA:

SNAP participants declined steadily through 2000 but began to rise in 2001 and increased each year through 2011, except for a slight dip in 2007. The increase was substantial from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2011. Average monthly participation increased from 17.2 million individuals in fiscal year 2000 to 40.3 million in fiscal year 2010, and to 44.7 million in fiscal year 2011.

In spite of the GOP message brigade on this thing, what the program statistics themselves tell you is that 1)  we have too many elderly and children living in poverty and 2) we have too many people who are actually working who don’t make wages that will get them out of poverty:

An honest read of the data would show you that the increases in the SNAP program aren’t part of the Welfare Queen narrative or even the weak economic recovery narrative — it is a narrative of increased numbers of people falling into poverty because their working wages don’t support their families.  As fast-food workers are getting alot of attention to their rolling strikes, this ought to be pretty plain.  It would be nice if Democrats would take up this argument and help these families push for the kind of wages that might eliminate the need for SNAP participation, instead of just wringing their hands about cutting benefits.  The NJ reports today that our Congressional delegation is gaining in clout in DC — it would be useful to the people of Delaware if they’d take some leadership helping these folks get the kind of salaries that might justify the kinds of cuts to these programs they so theatrically bemoan AND vote to cut.  Because why should taxpayers subsidize a low wage economy?

Vance Phillips Pleads the Fifth

At least that is what is being reported in the Cape Gazette today. You’ll remember that Phillips is being accused of sexually assaulting a campaign staffer in 2011 — repeatedly. So much for looking forward to Phillips telling his side of the story — as his legal team claimed he was eager to do.

Phillips declined to respond to all other claims made by Dunlap, basing his silence on the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects defendants from answering for infamous crimes unless the person is indicted by a grand jury; the amendment also protects defendants from testifying if their answers may be self-incriminating.

In Phillips’ answer, Wilmington attorney Kurt Heyman questions Dunlap’s claim that the Attorney General’s Office is investigating the case. “In a recent interview she announced that she remains in contact with the Delaware State Attorney General’s Office and that a criminal investigation into the allegations of her complaint is ongoing. Defendant has, to date, been unable to confirm whether that is the case,” Heyman wrote.

So he won’t answer unless he knows that there is not an ongoing criminal investigation? Or is it how much can he fabricate without fear of a criminal case coming back to smack him in the face? Whatever is going on, it certainly isn’t making this thing go away.

But hey, this seems to be the summer we live through more reminders that Sussex conservatives have more issues that we care to know.

h/t Anonymous tipster

The Whitesplaining Rand Paul

So Rand Paul went to Howard University yesterday to speak to the student body in what was billed as an outreach to minority and young voters. The GOP has gotten alot of press since November making it very plain that the structural problem with their party is its lack of appeal to minority and young voters. Rand Paul apparently sees himself as helping to fix this problem — first by actually going to the audience the GOP needs to start engaging, and then relying on the media to brand this as a libertarian outreach. The latter is important because it makes Paul look like a leader in a rebranding effort — making the GOP more libertarian — while still pursuing the same GOP goals on behalf of corporations and rich people. And trying to call those goals “freedom” and “opportunity”. If you haven’t seen the speech, I’ve embedded the video (approx. 50 minutes) at the end of this post. RealClearPolitics has the text of his remarks.

I’m going to start with the “freedom” thing. No self-respecting libertarian would be in the business of trying to give a fertilized egg the status of a born person. Especially as a political gambit to stop abortion and the right of grown up women to manage their lives. Leaving women to manage their reproductive choices, their health choices and their family’s well-being looks more like freedom than trying to invoke government intervention into the lives of women and their families. And libertarians who promote Big Government for women’s uterus’ are the embarrassed Republicans that we make fun of routinely. There is no freedom, no opportunity for women in invoking the machinery of government to interfere with your reproductive and health choices.

But Paul pretty much used this speech to do what the GOP does when it tries to reach out to African Americans — they invoke the history of Abraham Lincoln and ignore the more recent history of giving the racist Dixiecrats a permanent home and the routine use of the Southern Strategy to ensure votes from Southern (and some poor) white people. Failing to deal with the whole of their history always indicates to me that the GOP still isn’t ready to expand their coalition. It is in that giant blank space in the GOP’s history with race that African Americans turned to the Democrats. It is in looking at what happened there — not appealing to Abraham Lincoln — that would inform how the GOP needs to proceed to appeal to African Americans. And the first person who will recognize that and be willing to discuss ways to eliminate the utter dependence the GOP has on the Southern Strategy (and its variants) is going to be the first Republican who can be taken seriously in any outreach efforts.

Paul couldn’t even come to this meeting without condescending and disrespecting this audience. Why would you think that the college student audience at Howard University would not know the history of the NAACP? Why would you think that this audience of young African Americans wouldn’t be able to decide for themselves whether Voter ID was discrimination? I’d bet alot of money that every single person in that audience would know alot more about discrimination than Rand Paul ever will. Why would he lie about his opposition to the Civil Rights Act? Why would he invoke his own version of Mitt Romney’s 47% bull?

This last one is pretty important. Slavery and Jim Crow pretty badly distorted the economic “free market” for African Americans. Democratic policies started to help ease some (but no where near all) of those distortions. But the thing that Paul’s claim that Democrats give African Americans stuff ignores is that in the years since economic policy tried to right the ship for African Americans, there has been a mass migration directly to the working and middle class — the products of which were Paul’s audience. Outside of Pell grants and student loans, these kids aren’t getting any more from the government than their white counterparts are. Which makes Paul guilty of dogwhistling with the wrong people. There are still too many poor African Americans and too many for whom poverty is generational. There are alot of poor and generationally poor white people too, except they don’t get the press that the black and brown ones do. But the common problem for all of them is that they are poor — and there isn’t one damn thing about the GOP policy that will help them. There isn’t one damn thing about GOP policy that is going to invest in freedom and opportunity for these people. Because GOP policy is about sending as much tax money to their Corporate sponsors as possible. And we already know that America’s corporations are interested in the poor as a marketing cohort — extracting what resources they have, not investing in them (the opportunity part of the equation).

Charles Blow has a great piece today discussing precisely how the GOP lost the African American vote.

Republicans lost it when Richard Nixon’s strategist Kevin Phillips, who popularized the “Southern Strategy,” told The New York Times Magazine in 1970 that “the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans.”

He’s got alot more. But the bottom line is that as long as the GOP thinks that African Americans have simply no clue about their own history, their own history with the Republican Party and can’t be trusted to assess who can best represent their political interests, they still aren’t ready for an honest conversation. No matter how hard they try, the usual Republican Bamboozlement does not equal freedom and liberty.

Imagine if Head of MSNBC Had Done This

Bob Woodward reported in the Washington Post yesterday that Roger Ailes had approached General David Petraeus with some political career advice:

Petraeus, Ailes advised, should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested.

Got that? Roger Ailes — head of the fake news organization that actually is the PR arm for the RNC — is not only advising Petraeus on what jobs he should take in the Obama Administration, but encouraging him to run for President. With an offer to leave Fox to run his campaign (while Rupert — and Petraeus refers to Murdoch by first name — separately offered to bankroll the campaign). There is audio of the conversation between Petraeus and the Fox emissary, too.

I’m not surprised by this — it is only a cycle or two before FOX tries to put up its own GOP candidate — but I haven’t heard the howls of outrage. Because, if Phil Griffin of MSNBC had done this, can you imagine that this news would have passed with little comment? Or demands for Griffin’s head? Or demands for Congressional investigations?

In Which We Find John Stapleford Blaming Black and Brown People for Big Government

That was the nicest title I could come up with after reading this new bit of stupidity from John Stapleford of the brain dead CRI. Titled What role does government aid play in elections?, we find Stapleford trying to gin up some numerical proof for Mitt Romney’s claim that Obama won because he gave out gifts to key voter groups. And as usual for Stapleford, he produces a ton of numbers that aren’t sourced anywhere, counting on readers not to notice and counting on readers to not ask questions about the numbers he provides. In other words, it is the usual CRI bullshit. And I want to know how he gets paid for this. Seriously. And explain to me how it is that wingnut welfare — which Stapleford is clearly a beneficiary of — isn’t it’s own gift to the angry white people being paid to push this bullshit to people who really need better information than this. Because I’d bet ALOT OF MONEY that the number of wingnut welfare recipients that voted for Mitt Romney approaches 100%.

If people generally vote their self-interest, has the rapid run-up in government transfer programs drawn black and Latino voters disproportionately to the Democratic party and its platform of larger government? And, if so, will this continue in the years ahead?

The answer to both questions is yes.

This is how the piece starts. Notice that he only has issues with black and brown people voting their self-interests and he presumes that those self-interests prioritize government transfer programs. I dare you to find where Stapleford presumes that white (republican) people voting their self-interests are largely responsible for the fiscal straights that we find ourselves in now. These are the people who have been insisting on tax cuts, paying for wars on a credit card, adding new entitlements (medicare Part D) that were not paid for and that they never had any plan to pay for. The crash of the credit card economy these folks built is the reason why there has been a run-up in government transfer payments — because this crash put alot of people out of work and out of their houses. Although it is easier for Stapleford and his audience to believe that it is because a bunch of black and brown people decided to sit on their couches all day. And easier for him to ignore that there are plenty of white people engaged with government transfer programs as well. The racism here (yes, I said it) is the understood presumption that black and brown people care more about their government programs than they do about actually working. There are people of all colors who would be delighted to kick back and just collect a check, but MOST people want to work. Much of the population currently unemployed are people who built stuff, provided office support of all kinds, drove your goods from one place to another or any of the many jobs that were shed because Republicans drove the economy off of a cliff. Some of those unemployed people are teachers or firefighters who worked for governments who needed to downsize in order to balance their budgets. Who cares what color they are — these are human resources that are well and truly wasted because demand in the economy has dried up.

More than 40 percent of Delaware’s black community is enrolled in Medicaid and 57 percent of the Latino community.

This is more of the unsourced claims here, but look at that sentence and think about what else is part of this narrative. If these numbers are correct (and that is a pretty big if), then there are plenty of white people enrolled in Medicaid too. Yet there isn’t a single statistic about white people in Delaware participating in “government transfer payments”.

The rest of this article is engaged in building his strawman that somehow black and brown people who are on Medicaid or whatever the program is have a stake in government transfer payments. Tell that to the people affected by Superstorm Sandy who are busily building their federal government spending wish lists. But still, the majority of Medicaid expenditures are on behalf of the disabled and the elderly. The Kaiser people don’t break this down by race, but the only reason Stapleford does is to make sure that his angry white readers get the picture that it is black and brown people who are the cause of Big Government. Because this:

According to the Delaware Population Consortium, over this decade Delaware’s black population will grow twice as fast as the white population and Latinos will grow seven times as fast as whites.

And? The unstated threat here is that all of these black and brown people will grow up to sit on their couches all day while productive white people pay taxes in order to fund this laziness. It is the dog whistle of this entire piece. And it is just a stupid as the rest of his piece. Because while it is true that all Delaware kids will need all of the schooling they can get to be in this economy, an assessment that cared about the future would have called for better educational resources rather than just whistle away that more lazy colored people are on the way.

Shame on you John Stapleford and shame on the News Journal for publishing this bit of bamboozlement rather than add something to the discussion.

Paul Ryan Using the Poor as a Prop

It never ceases to amaze me that these people just don’t get it. In an effort to humanize Ryan, the Romney campaign had Ryan and his family stop at a soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio last week. There was no advance notice to the venue ( Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society), no asking of permission, no coordination of schedules — Ryan and his family and entourage just showed up.

From the Washington Post:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.
Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall…”
Upon entering the soup kitchen, Ryan, his wife and three young children greeted and thanked several volunteers, then donned white aprons and offered to clean some dishes. Photographers snapped photos and TV cameras shot footage of Ryan and his family washing pots and pans that did not appear to be dirty.

CBS News has this story, plus more pictures and video.

Amazing, right? Following behind Romney’s comments that 57% of Americans are dependent on the government and bascially moochers, we have the showily Catholic Ryan and family looking to use the poor as a prop. Which isn’t anywhere in Catholic teaching (or at least it wasn’t when I was observant). Catholics used to be taught that the poor and vulnerable are of special concern to God, meaning it should be to Catholics too. You are meant to embody that concern and genuinely work to help the poor — personally, via your church and in supporting social policy. Showing up to don some aprons, run some water on the pots and take some pictures doesn’t exactly count.

Besides, why wouldn’t you *ask* first? Lost of non-profits have provisions that require them to stay away from overt politics and just usurping their space for staged photos could genuinely threaten their funding. Funding that Ryan would be quick to deny — because the rich people he is in thrall to need more of his concern than poor people do.

Sher Valenzuela In the Disinformation Bubble

This post is to rescue this great comment from today’s Open Thread:

Sher Valenzuela blamed George Soros for releasing the information about her company, First State Manufacturing, and the millions in government loans and grants that it takes, when she was on Delaware 105.9 this morning with Gaffney.

She also claimed that the City of Milford doesn’t pay her utility bills. Why? Because her utility bills are paid for by a program funded by the City of Milford to subsidize “job creators” utility bills.

I can’t vote for someone THAT stupid who thinks I’m even MORE stupid than she is.

As a group of DLs commenters documented pretty thoroughly, the information on the subsidies that Sher received for her company are easily found by anyone with a computer and some sense. And hey — isn’t this what government transparency is for? So that citizens aren’t so easily bamboozled by their representatives?

But instead of just owning up to the fact that She Didn’t Build That, she wants to spin up a conspiracy theory on how the information got out there. So she’ll insult her supporters by blaming it on George Soros, rather than owning up to a campaign tactic that just isn’t working. Besides — how galling is it that the Delaware Liberal commenters who found all of this didn’t get any credit!

After this election season, bet there is going to be some effort by Congress to put more of this subsidy information underwraps.

The Price of Lying

One of the longstanding themes of this blog is the astonishing mendacity of the Republican Party, how out of balance that mendacity is within the current political discourse (I mean, damn, we expect politicians to lie, but these guys never stop) and the media’s complicity in laundering those lies. This cycle, there has been some effort to point out the lies, misstatements and inconsistencies — at least in reporting on the results of factchecking organizations or giving your own factcheckers a highlighted role in a reporting package. Lies aren’t often named as such — you get lots of euphemisms, especially from the fact checking organizations who don’t want to be seen using the apparently more emotionally charged word — lie. I wondered if the cumulative effects of the factchecking, a tough primary which featured Republicans calling each other liars, Democratic efforts to sow doubts and Rmoney’s persistently low ratings for honesty were starting to take a toll when I saw this piece from TPM on Tuesday:

Paul Ryan said that Democrats’s strategy through the election is “to call us liars for a month” in an interview with Michigan radio host Frank Beckmann Monday. The day after Wednesday’s presidential debate, the Obama campaign released an ad saying Romney had not told the truth during the debate.

Yesterday, the signal piece starting to push back on any accountability for truthfulness appeared in the Wall Street Journal from two of their opinion writers — Daniel Henninger and James Taranto. Henniger’s piece is Obama and the L-Word:

“Liar” is a potent and ugly word with a sleazy political pedigree. But “liar” is not being deployed only by party attack dogs or the Daily Kos comment queue. Mitt Romney is being called a “liar” by officials at the top of the Obama re-election campaign. Speaking the day after the debate in the press cabin of Air Force One, top Obama adviser David Plouffe said, “We thought it was important to let people know that someone who would lie to 50 million Americans, you should have some questions about whether that person should sit in the Oval Office.”

The Democratic National Committee’s Brad Woodhouse said, “Plenty of people have pointed out what a liar Mitt Romney is.” Deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter says Republicans “think lying is a virtue.”

Explicitly calling someone a “liar” is—or used to be—a serious and rare charge, in or out of politics. It’s a loaded word. It crosses a line. “Liar” suggests bad faith and conscious duplicity—a total, cynical falsity.

Nowhere in this piece does he acknowledge that the Romney people have been misleading Americans on a routine basis, and nor does he think that the Team Romney lies are a problem. The problem, according to Henninger, is that the Team Obama has had the temerity to notice the falsehoods and to specifically name them.

James Taranto dutifully takes the baton handoff and his column presents a Bill of Particulars of a sort. He attempts to list those instances where liberals have called out conservatives for lying that he doesn’t like. He doesn’t defend the lies, as such (except for a weak pushback on Michele Bachmann’s armed and dangerous remark), but presents it as a checklist of bad behavior by Democrats and liberals who have crossed some new line where speaking the truth in plain language is a new offense. Don’t miss Taranto’s attempt to invoke Godwin’s law on Andrew Sullivan’s invocation of the Big Lie for the irony.

Conservatives are accustomed to pushing around the media and some (too many) Democrats in order to clear a space for their alternate reality. They’ve run up against a whole lot of people who are no longer willing to see lies as an alternate POV. I give Team Obama alot of credit for being mostly fearless in pushing back on the lies — but I also give alot of credit to many long term progressive and liberal bloggers who never participated in the mechanism for laundering the lies (and who I think created the current fact-checking craze). Conservatives are finally getting some pushback on their strategy to just say something often enough until it becomes the truth. And since the new terms of the debate require them to show their homework (which they can’t do), they’ve launched this new crusade to make the business of calling out a lie bad behavior on the part of Democrats and the media.

It is a small glimmer of light, but worth celebrating. And making sure we never shy away from the words lie or liar when they are justified.

More Delaware GOP FAIL

The hapless Delaware GOP has decided to show the world just how toothless they currently are by deciding to try to gin up some pressure on Governor Jack Markell to not take a job that he doesn’t have an offer for yet. Seriously — this is what they want to talk about *today*. Remember, Politico posted up their highly speculative article, guessing that Gov. Markell would be selected for Secretary of Education in President Obama’s second term on September 14 (and Delaware Dem wrote about it the same day). 19 days later, GOP Chair Siglar and Gov. candidate Jeff Cragg are haplessly demanding that Governor Markell pledge to serve out his full term. More weak sauce from the Delaware GOP.

Asking for pledges to complete terms always strikes me as desperate. And asking for said pledge based on some speculation from the horse race press is especially desperate. Waiting to ask for this pledge 19 days after it was first reported is close to political malpractice. And this is especially easy for Jeff Cragg to ask for since he is in no danger of going anywhere except back to his business in November. I may have missed this one, but has Mr. Cragg pledged to give up his small business if by some miracle he manages to win in November?

A party out of power ought to be way more bold that this –especially in a place where some boldness might be welcome. But I think that what we are seeing here is the real weakness of the GOP message. Folks get that much of this is just BS and doesn’t have much to do with their daily lives. Is it possible? And we certainly do not have a GOP that is ready to step away from the party line and actually work for the people of this state (rather than themselves), which accounts for their sinking fortunes.

But seriously, you guys are going to have to do better than demanding “pledges” to get people to take you seriously.

Go to the UD Sustainable Coastal Community Initiative Meeting in Lewes

The Sustainable Coastal Community Initiative is meant to be a project where the University of Delaware offers its expertise to help the state’s coastal region to identify its long-term challenges and to work with those communities to develop preferred solutions. The website link here will give you lots more information. There was a community meeting on this project in late August where the 9-12 Patriots unsheathed their tin foil to disrupt this meeting. There is another meeting tonight, and another expectation that these people will show up to disrupt it again. From our anonymous tipster:

I understand that the Delaware 9-12 Patriots, who proudly disrupted a meeting of invited residents for a Cape Regional planning last month, and made headlines at the Cape Gazette, is planning to overtake/interrupt a meeting that UD planners are doing for the Lewes Library tomorrow evening, at the request and behest of Lewes Library on Wednesday, Sept. 26. at 6 p.m. “What do you geek?” This group is nuts, and bent on preventing a dialogue they feel is part of an “Agenda 21” plan. Would be nice to see some friendlies there.

El Som points to the specific tinfoil-hattedness coming from a local GOP candidate for the Senate. Needless to say, the UD’s effort doesn’t come wrapped in tin foil, but in some intentions to make sure that the coastal area maintains some quality of life. If you live in the area, please consider going to this meeting and help outnumber the crazies who are working only at feeding their conspiracy theories. Some people might be bamboozled by the silly Agenda 21 stuff, but you shouldn’t be. And if you go, come back and report on what is going on!