Tag Archives: Republican Bamboozlement

The Pundits Weigh in on the Clint and the Chair, etc.

I still didn’t see it, but apparently it was pretty funny — at least according to my Facebook page. Here is some reaction so far:

Team Obama response:

Know Your Meme already has a great entry on Eastwooding.

Maddowblog has a great sum up: Movie star debates chair, loses.

And even if we look past the bizarre chair shtick and the rambling remarks, the points Eastwood tried to make were a mess. The actor wants to withdraw quickly from Afghanistan, which is the opposite of Romney’s position. Eastwood thinks it’s a bad idea “for attorneys to be president,” overlooking the fact that Romney has a law degree. He even felt comfortable mocking Joe Biden’s speeches, even while delivering a meandering, cringe-inducing speech of his own.

But what helped make this a truly epic convention moment was the realization among Republicans that they’d made a horrible mistake. Paul Ryan was shown on camera looking deeply uncomfortable; Romney aides were overcome with a sense of dread; and it only took a few minutes for the campaign to start telling reporters that they weren’t responsible for this train wreck.

So is this what people are talking about this morning? Laughing at Clint speaking to his chair? Not a great way to end a convention, I think.

Doing the Math on the Angry White Men Party

So it looks like Lindsey Graham has actually worked out the math and sees that the GOP can’t survive much longer as the Angry White Guy Party.

Jay Bookman at the AJC hears Graham and thinks of Rmoney’s lies about welfare:

The ad is blatantly false, but it is nonetheless effective at “generating angry white guys,” to borrow Graham’s phrase. But as Graham also notes, the strategy behind it is not going to work much longer. Sheer math will not allow it. And every vote that such a strategy purchases in this election cycle will cost the Republicans dearly in every election for the next generation. With such ads, they are in effect eating their seed corn.

The Southern Strategy as long term suicide. That seems right to me. But much like Ann Romney telling Hispanic voters that if they’d get rid of their biases, they’d like the Republicans a whole lot more, the GOP spends alot of its time blaming the people they covet as voters for their problem:

Blaming potential customers for not liking your product gets you nowhere. In fact, if the customer picks up on that attitude, as they inevitably do, it guarantees that they’re going to like you even less.

And I’ll go further — when you make something like the Southern Strategy a key way to fire up part of your base, you have offended a good many of the ethnic groups you want to join you already. Why should I join up with a group of people who are going to demonize people like me for political gain?

Quoting Ron Brownstein from the National Journal:

“Republican strategists clearly feel the weight of trying to assemble a national majority with so little support among minorities that they must win three in five whites. “This is the last time anyone will try to do this,” one said. A GOP coalition that relies almost entirely on whites could squeeze out one more narrow victory in November. But if Republicans can’t find more effective ways to bridge the priorities of their conservative core and the diversifying Next America, that weight will grow more daunting every year.”

Right. And it can’t happen fast enough.

Wow Are They Done Already?

That was fast. And I’m not sure anyone got in a leisurely cigarette afterwards. Politico (yes, yes, I KNOW) is reporting on the current positioning of the GOP field for 2016. You read that right, 2016.

Apparently this event by conservatives in Iowa this weekend is the tell:

On Saturday, a trio of once — and possibly future — presidential candidates will speak to a conservative forum in Iowa hosted by the group Citizens United and a prominent Iowa social conservative organization, the Family Leader. Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Texas Gov. Rick Perry will all appear at the event.

Then there’s this:

Last weekend, Sarah Palin made a surprise appearance at an annual dinner hosted by Iowa businessman Bruce Rastetter, a major bankroller of Republican causes in the state and nationally. In May, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul spoke to the Iowa branch of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Virginia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, a favorite of national conservative activists, addressed the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner the same month.

And the choice bit of Ed Rollins telling Politico that GOP folks don’t think Rmoney has a very good shot, since he hasn’t run a good campaign. Like the campaign Ed Rollins ran for Michelle Bachmann. There’s more of the GOP positioning reported there, but there is one name that is not accounted for and that is Jon Huntsman. Meaning that the GOP currently intends to stand behind its thoroughgoing crazy wing for awhile.

Mitt Romney Goes to London to Get His Ugly American On

It is an unfortunate stereotype, but why in heck would you — a Presidential hopeful– travel to a host country (hoping for lots of positive photo ops, hoping to look statesmanlike), then launch into a criticism of their signature event? That event being the Olympics and supposedly the source of Romney’s hoped for photo ops. This is also a country currently under Conservative control (they might be your allies, dude) and one where you have just told the world that the current President doesn’t treat as a special partner. But Romney goes to London and tells NBC news:

Romney told NBC News: “There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials – that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”

In the interview he also called into question whether the British people were behind the Games.

“Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that’s something which we only find out once the Games actually begin,” he said.

David Cameron is having none of it, though:

“This is a time of some economic difficulty for the nation, everyone knows that. But look at what we’re capable of achieving even at a difficult economic time. Look at this extraordinary Olympic Park, built from nothing in seven years,” he said. […]
But Cameron, who was due to meet Romney later on Thursday, said: “In terms of people coming together, the torch relay demonstrated that this is not a London Games, this is not an England Games but this is a United Kingdom Games. We’ll show the world we’ve not only come together as a United Kingdom but are extremely good at welcoming people from across the world.”

This is not how one starts a “special relationship”, Mitt. And I’m thinking that the people of the UK aren’t going to let you invoke your Anglo-Saxon privileges on this, either.

Jeff and Sher Campaigning in Philadelphia?

Really. And the local GOP wonders why we think of them as the Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight. Memo to Jeff and Sher: You are running for statewide office in Delaware — Pennsylvanians won’t save you from the craziness that is the Delaware GOP.

Yesterday, Jeff Craig Cragg and Sher Valenzuela spent the day in Philadelphia, meeting the RNC Chair Reince Priebus, where it looks like the RNC Chair needed some local R props to help sell the latest round of RNC bullshit. Or Jeff and Sher were leveling up (geek alert!) their Charlatan characters. Who knows. So instead of being here actually working for votes IN DELAWARE, Jeff and Sher were on hand to signup for more of the usual bamboozelement:

Priebus, visiting Philadelphia today, repeatedly said Obama’s administration had given more than $500 million to build cars in another country. And he repeatedly tried to link the money to Obama’s federal stimulus program, not the program started under Bush. Both claims are inaccurate.

Inaccurate. So the RNC Chair came to Philly to lie to people and needed the Delaware GOP candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor to help him do that. The Washington Post already gave this 4 Pinnochios. And while the Post’s Fact Checker often has an eccentric view of facts (still working on the he say she say model), Bloomberg provides a contemporaneous account of the money and Fisker’s work to date. So while Fisker got less than $200M of their loan (the part meant to design the mid-level car), the RNC Chair is trying to bamboozle people into thinking that Fisker got more than $500M to build cars overseas. Not true. So while Delaware has an idle car factory, and an European car maker is looking to build cars in the US, Jeff and Sher are spending their energy helping the GOP to sell a lie about the program. You’d think that people who want to lead this state’s government would want cheerlead for more manufacturing jobs here, but it looks like they’e got their GOP marching orders down pat: if there is a choice between your political advantage and and long term economic improvements — always choose your personal political advantage. And definitely go to Pennsylvania to do it.

More from Priebus:

And, though he repeatedly complained that the Fisker auto production in America never happened, Priebus said the money dedicated to fund that manufacturing should not be given to the company.

Really? This is from the guy whose party voted down the Bring Jobs Home Act — an effort to stop subsidizing the outsourcing of jobs overseas. it wouldn’t stop the outsourcing, a company could do that if it made financial sense, but it would stop making American taxpayers pay for that. And Americans do pay to move jobs overseas — to the tune of almost 120% of the actual moving cost. Why should middle class taxpayers fund their own destruction? (And remember this outsourcing subsidy next time someone wants to sneer at “they didn’t build that”). Because the GOP’s objection here isn’t that a company got taxpayer funds — it is that they just don’t approve of this company because President Obama does.

And don’t forget that Jeff and Sher don’t care enough about Delaware’s future to be here to fight for it — they’re going to be in Pennsylvania sucking up to the worst of the GOP bamboozlers.

h/t Anonymous tipster

Taking the Mittens Off

We’ve all been pointing and laughing at the Romney campaign as they find it simply impossible to defend not releasing his tax returns. Between throwing up a shiny bit of news bait of Condi as VP, stupid allegations of cronyism (from a guy who won’t tell who funds him or who bundles contributions) and even the desperation of taking the President’s words out of context — they can’t find their footing. Jonathan Chait writes in NY Magazine that Mitt Romney Gets Angry. And in getting angry, they aren’t going to get smarter, they are going to morph into the comments section of (insert rightwing blog site here). So that John Sununu trying to tell people that President Obama is not American is not a mistake of the news day — it is the signal that more is coming.

Chait relies on reporting from Buzzfeed:

In speeches from Des Moines to Dallas, Romney has always been careful to hedge his tough digs at Obama with a civil nod toward the president’s moral character: “He’s a nice guy,” the Republican has often said. “He just has no idea how the private economy works.” But Tuesday’s speech included no such hedge — and one campaign adviser said there’s a reason for that.
“[Romney] has said Obama’s a nice fellow, he’s just in over his head,” the adviser said. “But I think the governor himself believes this latest round of attacks that have impugned his integrity and accused him of being a felon go so far beyond that pale that he’s really disappointed. He believes it’s time to vet the president. He really hasn’t been vetted; McCain didn’t do it.”
Indeed, facing what the candidate and his aides believe to be a series of surprisingly ruthless, unfounded, and unfair attacks from the Obama campaign on Romney’s finances and business record, the Republican’s campaign is now prepared to go eye for an eye in an intense, no-holds-barred act of political reprisal, said two Romney advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the next chapter of Boston’s pushback — which began last week when they began labeling Obama a “liar” — very little will be off-limits, from the president’s youthful drug habit, to his ties to disgraced Chicago politicians.

So instead of issues and vision, we are going to be treated to a tour of the fevered swamp wingnutland. Where President Obama isn’t one of us, where he has drug issues, active ties to disgraced politicians, Jeremiah Wright and whatever else they can gin up to remind people that it is Obama’s ontological blackness that is his disqualification for office. It is a stupid strategy — Palin and McCain (Palin mostly) worked this vein like nobody’s business and were eventually smacked back by even the media. But it is a strategy designed as a pitch to his pathetic ans racist base who won’t be happy until they get the notice of the tree they should all meet up at. Here’s Chait:

The point of disparaging Obama’s character is to paint him as a cultural alien unfit for the presidency. More of this theme may or may not have helped in 2008. But you can’t do that effectively against somebody who is already President of the United States. Obama has spent four years being photographed and filmed in the Rose Garden and saluting the troops and waving from Air Force One. Hard-core conservatives may still regard him as an alien figure, but this strategy stands zero chance of working with middle America. All it can do is chip away at Romney’s personal standing, which (in an electorate with settled views about the incumbent) is the one real variable at play here.

Apparently Rmoney is mad that Stephanie Cutter has the nerve to suggest that misstating the facts on an SEC filing may be a felony. But let’s remember that Romney took the President out of context not once, but twice in the fall and when this was pointed out to him, “he gleefully refused to apologize for dishonestly taking Obama out of context, thinking this makes him look like a player. Now Romney is pissed of because the Obama campaign has been successful in impugning Rmoney’s only claim for qualifications for the job. And Rmoney was supposed to be the adult in the room. Apparently even he doesn’t believe his own bullshit and what is left is only what his angry and delusional base tells him to say. Because really, all of this crap is based entirely in the wingnut delusion that Obama wasn’t properly “vetted”.

TPM is also reporting on this. (Why would a campaign tell reporters is it not only going negative, but that they are making stuff up while they are at it?) Telling the world that you are getting ready to succumb to wingnut fever dreams that most independents already find distasteful seems unhinged, thin-skinned and vindictive and not ready for prime time. Because when the 3AM call comes, you don’t get to rely on fever dreams to make the problem go away.

Romney’s Evasive Character Unfit for Presidency

That is the title of this intriguing article by Robert Creamer, published over at The Democratic Strategist. In it, he details the multiple things we have learned about Romney over the past few months in an argument to show that Romney is fundamentally unfit to be President. Go read the whole thing, because it is the entire argument that is interesting, not just these key bits:

Romney can dance around the issue, parse words, argue he gave up “management control” until he is blue in the face. But however he structured the decision making process at Bain Capital while he was also running the Olympics, he was ultimately in charge — and he was ultimately responsible for — and benefited mightily from its actions. In every business the buck stops with the CEO, Chairman, President and sole stockholder — it’s that simple.

Romney’s refusal to be held responsible for the actions of the company he owned — and for which he remained CEO, Chairman and President — says a lot about the kind of President he would be — and a lot more about his character.

This is a guy who plays by a different set of rules than ordinary mortals. And the last thing he wants to do is allow those ordinary mortals to see first hand how he did what he did by disclosing his income tax returns from the years he was active at Bain.

Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who is always happy to bask in the glow of success, but is never willing to take responsibility for failure.

(ed. This is pretty much American CEO behavior, right here.)

Romney may believe that the President of Bain Capital didn’t have responsibility for the company’s actions — but someone should explain to him that the President of United States is absolutely responsible for the work of every Executive Department, whether or not he is directly involved in every decision. The President of the United States is responsible for the success or failure of every military mission. He is responsible for preventing recession — for saving the auto industry even when it is unpopular — for making the tough decisions and living with their consequences. When you’re President of the United States, you can’t say, “Oh I had no responsibility because I left the day-to-day decisions of the Defense Department to others.” Do we really want a President that refuses to take responsibility for the actions of a company for which he was CEO, President, Chairman and sole stockholder?

Seriously, go read the entire thing. It strikes me that the Obama team have already taken this to heart and you can see some of this Can You Trust him in their own messaging. Probably pretty sweet coming from the man accused of being a secret Kenyan.

And I’m posting this because I’m not sure anyone but Xstryker clicked the link yesterday, but this picture is just hysterical:

Mitt Romney Has Secret Black Friends

And he won’t tell you who they are. This is from TPM, who has some of the video of Rmoney making this claim of secret support from black leadership.

So let’s think about this for a minute. Rmoney wants you to know that he has more black support than can be public. Because these black people are somehow afraid to be known Rmoney supporters. Why? Because there is a price to be paid for getting outside of some black people’s party line.

This is more of the GOPs despicable Southern Strategy — feeding into their stereotypes that black people are all the same. Unless they are GOP black people. And that this community is particularly ruthless towards its members who turn to the GOP apostasy. So Rmoney is left to claim secret support of people who are afraid of their own communities.

This is bullshit,of course. Starting with the fact that being a GOP black person is an easy way to get to the head of the wingnut welfare line (c.f., Alan West, Artur Davis, Michael Steele) because the GOP is so very desperate for every bit of diversity they can get. But let’s get to the real reason that the GOP has issues with black and brown communities — demonizing these communities is a core piece of the GOP appeal. There won’t be very many converts to the GOP side as long as they keep pointing to these communities as the basic problem of angry white communities. Besides, the current GOP appeal is pretty much about making sure that wealthy people get as many tax dollars as possible, by any means necessary. Most black and brown people get that this is a scam, and a scam designed to undermine their own interests. So even though these communities may have some natural alignments with the GOP (especially in social conservatism), they keep advocating policies that are never going to include the communities they are working so hard at demonizing.

But then, Rmoney won’t tell you about where he has his money offshored. He won’t tell you about his alternate health care plan. He won’t tell you about how he’ll reform the tax code. But he will tell you he has secret black supporters.

Mitt Romney Is Not Having a Good Week

At least that is what it looks like from the radio and online news I see. Let’s start with his campaign not knowing how to settle on whether the penalty for not having health coverage built into Romneycare and Obamacare is a penalty or a tax. TPM compiles the confusion:

Then we have Vanity Fair’s investigation into Rmoney’s offshore financial dealings.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms.

The AP followed up on this, going into some detail about how some of these have never been disclosed in required public documents. Meaning that he has been lying to people he wants to vote for him for quite awhile. And isn’t it interesting that the one thing he doesn’t have multiple positions on is his finances. He just won’t tell you about his worth or how he skips out on paying US taxes.

The mystery surrounding Sankaty reinforces Romney’s history of keeping a tight rein on his public dealings, already documented by his use of private email and computer purges as Massachusetts governor and his refusal to disclose his top fundraisers. The Bermuda company had almost no assets, according to Romney’s 2010 tax returns. But such partnership stakes could still provide significant income for years to come, said tax experts, who added that the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to know for certain.

Even Rupert Murdoch is getting in on the action, taking the candidate and his campaign to task for not knowing what they are doing:

Why make such an unforced error? Because it fits with Mr. Romney’s fear of being labeled a flip-flopper, as if that is worse than confusing voters about the tax and health-care issues. Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we’ve said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters.

And apparently they are having a bad enough week that they’ve sent Ann Romney out to tease the media about a female VP candidate. So they are hoping that the media will be distracted by this new bit of shiny horserace fodder instead of any of the accountability reporting that necessarily pulls aside the curtain on the stuff people like Romney want to keep hidden from us.

Romney’s Economic Plan Is The Bush Program, Just Updated

But you knew that, right? A Romney spokeperson was on a radio program (apparently this is part of their Hispanic outreach) and was asked by the host about Romney’s economic program. This is what she said (this is about 1min, 45 long):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kDi72STXTM ]
(this is about 1min, 45 long)

Yes, you heard that. Romney’s plan is the Bush program only updated. Don’t know why it needed to be updated, because that last plan damn near killed us all. Don’t know why they think that people want to go back to the BushCo era, either. Then again, the business of pillaging your treasury to send the funds to your friends is pretty much the GOP Platform.

Study: Republicans HAVE Gotten More Conservative

Surprise, right? Except this time it is backed up by political science research that shows pretty clearly the steady rightward shift of the GOP. Look at this graph (click for a larger version):

The two political scientists who have been plotting the ideological shifts and polarization of both parties are Keith Poole of the University of Georgia and Howard Rosenthal of New York University. From an NPR article on this study:

In a recent conversation Poole, who’s viewed by other political scientists as the go-to expert on this issue, explained that the data are very clear:

“This is an entirely objective statistical procedure. The graphs just reflect what comes out of the computer. Howard Rosenthal and I, we’ve been working on something called Nominate. This does all the Congresses simultaneously, which allows you to study change over time.

“The short version would be since the late 1970s starting with the 1976 election in the House the Republican caucus has steadily moved to the right ever since. It’s been a little more uneven in the Senate. The Senate caucuses have also moved to the right. Republicans are now furtherest to the right that they’ve been in 100 years.

The NPR article lets the usual suspects indulge in their “both sides do it too” handwaving — which in this case, looks particularly stupid with this graph right in your face. I was particularly struck by this bit by the AEI source:

Poole acknowledges that Democrats have contributed their share to the polarization of the political process, especially, he says, through their use of identity politics, appeals to race, ethnicity and gender.

This sounds like GOP tactics to me, really.

For the people who want a pox on all of the compromises, it is interesting that the period of time when parties (in the House at least) were closer together was after WWII, during the great growth of the middle-class and American industry. I would speculate that the rightward shift of the GOP is directly related to their abandonment of middle class issues in order to champion those of American industry. And while these GOP lights are busily talking about smaller government, dismantling the rights of people not like them, suppressing voters all the while making sure that businesses get the tax policy and regulatory oversight (none) they’ve bought. Not particularly conservative in the usual sense of the word, but very focused policy favorable to business and wealthy interests and policy focused on controlling and suppressing everyone else. It is the only way to explain how the GOP has abandoned the business of governing.