GOP wins Tuesday in the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia boosted Republicans’ hopes for a 2010 comeback. But the win by Democrat Bill Owens (in photo) in a special New York congressional race — a seat that Republicans have held for more than a century — highlighted what can happen when conservatives try to purge moderates from the GOP. National conservative talk-show hosts blasted the GOP candidate as too liberal and not a true Republican. And politicians such as Sarah Palin and even Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, injected themselves into the race by endorsing the Conservative Party candidate. But Newt Gingrich warned that such national interference in local elections could make Nancy Pelosi the House “speaker for life” and guarantee President Obama’s re-election. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices,” Gingrich said.
Two more Sarah Palin books are coming out. “The Persecution of Sarah Palin” blames the media elite for Palin’s problems. “Sarah From Alaska” is sympathetic to the challenge Palin faced but argues that her lack of preparation contributed to her poor interview and debate performances. But neither book fully explains why Palin causes such derangement in many of her supporters and critics, a Washington Post book review argued.
This may be the moment for conservative Democrats. More Americans are conservative than are moderate or are liberal, according to a new Gallup poll. Forty percent of Americans polled described their political views as conservative, compared with 36 percent who said they were moderate and 20 percent who said they were liberal. Moderates and conservatives were tied in polling from 2005 through 2008, but conservatism has gained ground among independent voters, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll puts the Republican Party’s favorable rating at its lowest in at least a decade, 36 percent, compared with 53 percent favorability of the Democratic Party.
Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post ranked Sarah Palin as the most influential Republican, noting the upcoming release of her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” and her ability to draw big and energetic crowds. Meanwhile, the editors of the Nation are publishing “Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare” on the same day that Palin’s book comes out.
The Republican Party’s opposition to all things Obama has earned it the nickname “the party of ‘no.’” But the GOP is betting that its opposition will attract voters concerned about deficits and unemployment. “We’re the party of know: k-n-o-w,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of House Republicans’ campaign committee. GOP strategist Vin Weber sees no downside to “no” votes. “The basic rule is you rarely pay a price at the polls for being against something,” he said, though he acknowledged, “that’s quite aside from whether you should or shouldn’t, or whether the country needs it or doesn’t need it.”
Given all the times Rush Limbaugh has dragged out old quotes to demagogue liberals, it’s rich that he is so upset about being sacked in his effort to buy the St. Louis Rams over racial comments he has made over the years. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative,” he said Wednesday on his radio show. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”
More commentators are voicing concerns about the recklessness of conservative talk show hosts. Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan (in photo) said ranters aren’t responsible critics. “This isn’t debate, it’s more like incitement,” she warned. Columnist David Brooks said the undeserved influence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hanity is “the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.” Steven F. Hayward of the conservative American Enterprise Institute worried that “the brain waves of the American right continue to be erratic, when they are not flat-lining.”
“By 2030, the Latino share of the vote in America is likely to double,” former George W. Bush administration speechwriter Michael Gerson noted. “Some Republicans seem to be calculating that this influence can be countered by running up their percentage of support among white voters. But this is not eventually realistic, because non-college-educated whites are declining as a portion of the electorate. And it is disturbing in any case to set the goal of a whiter Republican Party. This approach would not only shrink the party, it would split it. Catholics and evangelicals, who have been central to the Republican coalition, cannot ultimately accept a message of resentment against foreigners. Their faith will not allow it.”
Columnist Thomas Frank noted the “curious reversal” by Republicans who argue that private insurance companies wouldn’t be able to compete with a “predatory” public option insurance plan that covers all comers, including those private companies won’t insure. Thomas wrote: “Just think of the conservative caricatures that must be inverted for this argument to work: All those soft liberal bureaucrats? Ferocious man-eaters. The welfare state? Law of the jungle. And the actuarial-minded hardliners of the insurance biz, the ones who deny your claim or cancel your policy? A gentle but endangered species that needs our nurturing, sort of like panda bears.”
Rather than leave health care reform to Democrats, “conservatives should seize the mantle of reform and lead,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wrote. He offered 10 ideas to increase the affordability and quality of health care (nearly all of which have been around for some time). The proposals include voluntary purchasing pools, lawsuit reform, increased transparency and payment reform, electronic medical records, tax-free health savings accounts, rewarding healthy lifestyle choices and requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions. “The public is interested in solutions that will improve America’s health-care system, not dismantle it,” Jindal wrote. “Republicans can lead on this.”
For years, Democrats wrongly portrayed GOP proposals to curb the growth of Medicare as attempts to kick medicine out of Granny’s hand. Now the roles have reversed, and Republicans are falsely accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare benefits as part of the health care reform proposals. Some may cheer this role reversal as “turnabout is fair play.” But it shows how both parties are willing to scare seniors in order to score political points. No wonder it is so difficult to reform entitlement programs.
Columnist Rod Dreher warned his fellow conservatives to back away from Fox News host Glenn Beck. “Beck is a white Jeremiah Wright, a crazy-pants conspiracy theorist whose worldview is rooted in the paranoid teachings of a far-right Mormon political guru named W. Cleon Skousen,” Dreher wrote. “Before signing up as a recruit in Beck’s army, conservative Becketeers had better think long and hard about where their affable leader is taking them.”
From Joe Klein’s review of “The Clinton Tapes,” the new book by Taylor Branch: “The rowdy, discursive intellectual brilliance of the man is evident on almost every page, and so is the self-indulgence, self-pity and self-destructiveness — the magisterial excessiveness of every sort. Compared with the buttoned-up cool of the Oval Office’s current occupant, Bill Clinton is a one-man carnival — a magician, tightrope walker, juggler, mesmerist, hot-dog-eating contestant and burlesque show.”
When she was first lady, Hillary Clinton said that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was out to destroy her husband’s presidency. When asked Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether the conspiracy is still there, Bill Clinton said it was. “It’s not as strong as it was because America has changed demographically,” Clinton said. “But it’s as virulent as it was.”
ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the past 15 years — an average of $3.5 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the past year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. So with this massive pillaging of America’s economic security and its control of American government by its richest and most powerful factions growing by the day, to whom is America’s intense economic anxiety being directed? To a nonprofit group that devotes itself to providing minute benefits to people who live under America’s poverty line. Apparently, the problem is not that taxpayer dollars are going to prop up billionaires, oligarchs and their corrupt industries. It’s that America’s impoverished — a group that is growing rapidly — is getting too much, has too much power and too little accountability. — Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com
The Census Bureau recently severed ties with the advocacy group ACORN, and the Senate voted to deny it access to federal housing funds. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that it took this long and hidden-camera video footage of ACORN workers apparently advising others to commit crimes before officials would act. Allegations of fraud have dogged ACORN for years, sometimes resulting in convictions. Florida authorities recently arrested 11 ACORN workers and charged them with submitting fake voter-registration papers. The videos, which were made by self-described conservative activists, show ACORN employees exhibiting disdain for the law. In one, a couple posing as a prostitute and her pimp are given advice on how to open a brothel and launder the ill-gotten earnings. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., called on Congress and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to investigate ACORN. That’s a good start, but the videos suggest that a Justice Department criminal investigation is also needed. — Wall Street Journal editorial
Though some cads can be somewhat lovable or redeemable, “John Edwards is not,” columnist Eugene Robinson wrote. “His caddishness, it appears, has no redeeming social or political value. He’s just a bad cad.” Robinson noted claims by a former close aide that not only is Edwards the father of his mistress’ 19-month-old daughter, Edwards allegedly promised the mistress that he would marry her after his wife, Elizabeth, had died of cancer, and that they had started to plan the wedding. “The forgivable kind of cad could never do such a thing,” Robinson wrote. “Only the worst kind would.”
Despite all his ranting and conspiracy theories about President Obama, Fox News host Glenn Beck (in photo) thinks GOP nominee John McCain “would have been worse for the country” than Obama. Beck also told CBS News’ Katie Couric that he might have voted for Hillary Clinton over McCain, whom Beck described as a “weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.”
The 2012 presidential election is a long way off, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the favorite so far among those attending the Values Voter Summit last weekend in Washington, D.C. Huckabee received 28 percent of the vote in the summit’s straw poll. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty each received about 12 percent of the vote, and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence received 11 percent.
Rod Dreher, a social conservative who writes for the Dallas Morning News, went public with how demoralized and politically homeless he’s feeling amid the angry right-wing mob led by the likes of “foul-mouthed” Rush Limbaugh and “paranoid” Glenn Beck. Dreher wrote: “The conservative movement is herking and jerking like a zombie, dedicated to little more than frenetic gestures execrating Obama, and to regaining power. To what end? Given that they’re birthing a conservative party whose instincts are dictated by loudmouths, reactionaries and crackpots, and overseen by cynics, it’s dispiriting to contemplate.”
Tea party supporters are upset with the mainstream media for reporting that the number of people at the 9/12 rally in Washington, D.C., totaled in the “tens of thousands.” Some conservatives have said that the total was more than a million, and they see the disparity as another example of liberal bias. Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander explains the process his newspaper went through to try to estimate the crowd size. Meanwhile, an aerial photo circulating on the Internet supposedly showing a huge crowd at the 9/12 rally turns out to be from a different rally in the 1990s.
The conservatives who used a hidden camera to film meetings with ACORN employees released another video this week. This one was from an ACORN office in San Bernardino, Calif. An employee there was unfazed and supportive as the undercover activist explained that he wanted to open a whorehouse with underage children and use the profits to help finance his political campaign. Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., urged the Justice Department Tuesday to investigate ACORN.
Among the new names surfacing as potential GOP presidential nominees in 2012 is that of Gen. David Petraeus (in photo), who now heads U.S. Central Command. “I’d like to see Gen. Petraeus warm up,” former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole told Politico. “I don’t know anything about his politics, whether he has an interest. It’s kind of a time for another Eisenhower, in my view.” Others newly mentioned include MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker. “Several GOP candidates are coming to the view that the way to run against Obama is not to out-Obama Obama with flash or sizzle,” said Dan Senor, a Bush administration veteran. “They want to go in the opposite direction: smart, back-to-basics, competence.”
Good for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for trying to maintain some civility in the health care debate. After a women at a town hall meeting in Arizona this week asked McCain if Obama knows we still live under a Constitution, McCain assured her that, yes, Obama knows that and respects the Constitution — which many audience members booed. But McCain continued, adding that Obama is sincere in his beliefs (more boos) but that he and Obama have a fundamental difference in philosophy about the role of government — which is why, McCain noted, we have elections and competition among political parties. “He is the president of the United States,” McCain said, “and let’s be respectful.”
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen indicts the vast majority of Republicans for failing to call former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on her “death panel” lie and other distortions, which he says are helping turn health care reform into “the Red Menace of our day.” Cohen writes: “Sadly, the list of the meek includes Palin’s Geppetto, Sen. John McCain, who fashioned her out of political desperation and has yet to whittle her down to size. In an update of the folk tale, I’d like to think that whenever he praises Palin, his own nose grows.” Cohen concludes that Palin “has gone from a 57 percent favorable rating soon after McCain picked her as his running mate to a current 39 percent — a negative landslide of justifiable proportions. Before she fades into fringedom, she will do one bad and one good thing — hurt the very people she supposedly champions and expose the appalling opportunism of the Republican leaders. I have in my hand a list of their names.”
Meanwhile, Palin captured 20 percent in a new Marist poll about potential GOP presidential nominees for 2012, compared with Mitt Romney’s 21 percent and Mike Huckabee’s 19 percent.
The death of 78-year-old columnist Robert Novak seems like the end of an era of political reporting and conservative commentary. Some may know him only as the guy who identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent (and got away with it). But his insider status and corrosive way with words made him a force in national politics and policymaking, as well as the rise of cable news. The editorial board at his home newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, recalled this Novak nugget: “Always love your country — but never trust your government!”
