The GOP In A Nutshell

Via TPM:

An attendee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday allegedly threw nuts at a black camerawoman working for CNN and said “This is how we feed animals” before being removed from the convention, a network official confirmed to TPM.

The CNN official declined to confirm specific details of the incident to TPM but generally confirmed an account posted on Twitter by former MSNBC and Current anchor David Shuster: “GOP attendee ejected for throwing nuts at African American CNN camera woman + saying ‘This is how we feed animals.’”

Better Late Than Never

I think the media in this country are finally catching on to the GOP tactic of putting words into Obama's mouth that he did not say (or accusing him of a policy that he did not implement) and then attacking him on it.  We've seen Republicans do that with the You Didn't Built That meme and follow it up with the whole false notion that Obama is cutting Medicare benefits by $716 billion (Obama increased Medicare benefits). Then, in a Newsweek hit piece, right-winger Niall Ferguson actually wrote that the President broke his pledge that ObamaCare wouldn't increase the federal deficit (the CBO has determined that the Affordable Care Act does in fact reduce the deficit).

More recently, we've seen Republicans stating that Obama eliminated the "back to work" requirements for welfare when he actually strengthened said requirements.  But the media's response to this GOP strategy is begining to evolve.  Wolf Blitzer, a few days ago, challenged Romney surrogate John Sununu on this particular piece of GOP welfare bullshittery in what I thought was a very impressive interview on Wolf's part.  When CNN host Soledad O'Brien challenged Sununu a few days prior on the exact same GOP horseshit, all Sununu could say in response was: “Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this.”

And on NPR last Friday, Scott Inskeep inverviewed radical right winger Connie Mackey, a Todd Akin defender. When Inskeep asked Mackey whether Akin should have known that his remarks on "legitimate rape" were incorrect when he uttered them, Mackey didn't answer the question but instead tried to launch another false attack and asked why the media hasn't questioned Obama's statement that men should never legislate health issues related to women. Obama, of course, did not say that; and to NPR's credit, the Obama comment was immediately replayed, and the President actually stated that politicians, some of them men, shouldn't interfere in women's health care.

There is a reason why the GOP is openly lying about Obama (and oftentimes actually stating that the President did something when he did the exact opposite).  Like him or not, everybody in this country pretty much knows Obama and what he stands for, and this is a problem for Republicans, particularly given that few people out there actually like Romney while Obama is generally liked as a person.  Earlier in the year, folks like Sarah Palin -- in an attempt to resolve this problem -- suggested that stale issues like Reverend Wright and Bill Akers should be re-asserted because Obama wasn't "properly vetted" four years ago, but that notion gathered little if any steam.

As pointed out here, the Republicans need something new to say about Obama because all the old stuff just isn't working. So the GOP strategy now is to simply make up stuff about Obama and hope that some of it sticks.

We have, of course, seen it all before.  But this time there is a difference.  The mainstream media types just aren't buying into it like they did in the past and are pushing back. I suspect the GOP are just as surprised by this development as they are about the fact that the Democrats themselves are fighting back instead of just taking the punches.

Is Mitt Romney The Biggest Coward To Ever Run For President?

I couldn't believe this one:

In a wide-ranging interview with Time Magazine, Mitt Romney declined to say which deductions he would eliminate from the tax code in order to make his plan to cut tax rates across the board revenue-neutral.

"I know our Democrat friends would love to have me specify one or two so they could amass the special interest to fight that effort," Romney told managing editor Richard Stengel when asked to specify which deductions he would eliminate. He then launched into a general discussion about ways to limit deductions, saying the choice would be made "in consultation with Congress" -- in other words, after the election.

So Romney was too scared to run on his single legislative success as Massachusetts governor (namely RomneyCare), then he wouldn't release his tax returns -- even though his own father released twelve years of them when he ran for president -- and now he won't tell us what he'd do if elected because he's afraid the Democrats might use it against him. We've also learned that he recently granted an interview with a Denver reporter only on the condition she "not ask him about abortion or Todd Akin."

I openly question whether this guy has the guts to lead our country.  He obviously lacks the testicular fortitude to run for president.

We already know he wouldn't have crossed into Pakistan to kill bin Laden.  We know this because Romney admitted he wouldn't do it, and followed up this admission by attacking then-Senator Obama for saying that he (Obama) would. We all know who won that debate (hint: it wasn't Osama bin Laden).

God help us if Romney wins the election.  He's such a wimp that our country would be under Sharia Law in less than a year if that happened. 

What Is It With These People? (With Update)

First we have Todd Akin being force to walk back his "legitimate rape" comment, and now we have this character:

New Hampshire sheriff hopeful Frank Szabo on Thursday backed off his threat to resort to arrests and even deadly force to stop doctors from performing abortions if he is elected to office.

The Hillsborough County, N.H., candidate apologized for comments he made to local news outlets on Wednesday when he was pressed about how far he would go for his anti-abortion views. “What I said was inexcusable, and as sheriff, I would not use lethal force against an abortion doctor,” Szabo said in a written statement to the Bedford Patch.

The title of this post is actually a rhetorical question, because I know what is going on with these folks. Let me explain (again):

The GOP lost badly in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Lots of folks anticipated that the Republican Party would moderate in response to these defeats and move away from the far right policies of Bush/Cheney. Instead, the GOP chose to become even more radicalized than it was during the Bush Regime. A lot of this might have had something to do with the fact that the country elected a Black Democrat as president in 2008, but I digress.

This radical move to the right by the GOP scared folks like Mitt Romney -- who undoubtedly wanted to campaign on his one legislative success as Massachusetts governor (namely RomneyCare) but now can't even mention it -- and forced Republicans like Dick Lugar and others out of office because they had the gall to actually negotiate with Democrats, which magically turned them into "moderates" and thus made them unacceptable to the newly-re-radicalized GOP.

But the Republican hard-right turn gave folks like Todd Akin and the aforementioned wannabe sheriff the political cover they needed to tell us how they really felt about things. Or at least they thought it gave them political cover. They are now finding out otherwise.

Believe me when I tell you that Todd Akin still thinks that the female body, when legitimately raped, has ways to try to shut that whole thing down pregnancy-wise, and sheriff candidate Frank Szabo still feels that abortion doctors should be shot on sight.  I'm sure these guys routinely made comments like that when they were speaking with like-minded folks pretty much every other Republican, and their listeners probably agreed with them wholeheartedly.

Akin and Szabo, however, actually thought that such comments -- given the hard GOP lurch to the right -- would now be appropriate regardless of who the audience was, and this got them into trouble.  We've seen it before. Remember when Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) forgot he was on the House floor when he apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward and said he was "ashamed" of the American response to BP’s oil spill and then described the creation of the $20 billion claims fund as a "tragedy of the first proportion"? Well, the GOP "Establishment" did not like that one bit:

The damage control was swift and the pushback severe — leaders in Barton’s own party threatened to yank his ranking-member status on the committee. Gulf-state Republicans seethed, and the top three GOP House leaders were compelled to put out a joint statement saying, “Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong.”

It was really hard to blame Rep. Barton for this particular dust-up, given that Republicans were, at that time, routinely attacking Obama for demanding creation of the BP fund, but weren't openly doing it on the floor of the House because it simply wasn't politically expedient for them to do so.

I have no doubt we'll see a lot more of this during the run-up to the General Election. These kinds of things happen when you have a political party as schizophrenic as the GOP. Should be a fun next couple of months.

UPDATE:  Akin's campaign calls Fox News' bluff:

“The fact that Claire McCaskill is only polling at 48 percent after 72 hours of constant negative attacks on Todd Akin shows just how weak she is,” Perry Akin, the congressman’s campaign manager and son, said in a statement Thursday. “If she can’t break 50 percent after a week like this, Democrats should ask Claire to step down. Todd is in this race to win; we will close this gap and win in November with the support of the grassroots in Missouri and across America.”

The Akin campaign is responding to a Fox News poll which shows McCaskill leading Akin 48 percent to 38 percent. Senator McCaskill herself thinks that this particular poll is horseshit and was put out there to pressure Akin to drop out. Her Twitter response: “Rasmussen poll made me laugh out loud - if anyone believes that, I just turned 29. Sneaky stuff.”

Most Hilarious Tweet Of All Time

From Todd Akin:

"I apologized but the liberal media is trying to make me drop out. Please stand w/ me tonight by signing my petition at akin.org/still-standing"

A list of the media types who want Akin to pull out would include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the National Review editorial board. The fact that Akin considers these folks to be part of the "Liberal Media" speaks volumes as to how extreme this guy really is.

Frankly, I didn't think it was possible to be to the right of Ann Fucking Coulter.

It Looks Like Akin Just Might Stay The Course (At Least For Now) - w/ update

From TPM:

GOP Rep. Todd Akin still has the edge over Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in Missouri, according to a new snap poll on Monday from Democratic-aligned Public Policy Polling — despite a national controversy over Akin's remarks about "legitimate rape" and false claims that rape victims cannot get pregnant, which have led virtually the whole Republican Party to call for him to drop out.

Akin led McCaskill 44 percent support to 43 percent. In the previous PPP survey, conducted in late May in the middle of the Republican primary campaign, Akin led by a similar margin, 45 percent to 44 percent. Akin won the primary two weeks ago. PPP's Tom Jensen writes: "75% of Missouri voters think Akin's comments were inappropriate, but they're still voting along party lines."

If Akin was on the fence as to whether or not to drop out of the race, then this poll should convince him to stay in, at least in the short term. But I have a feeling this Akin character will stay in it to the bitter end. He's probably dreamed of being a U.S. Senator for quite awhile, and I'd be surprised if he just gave up when he's this close.

It should be noted that Claire McCaskill has - for quite some time - been a longshot to retain her Senate seat. Akin was simply the best candidate for McClaskill to run against, at least from the Democrats' point of view, because Akin was the craziest of all the possible contenders. It is still going to be very tough for McClaskill to win even if Akin stays in the race. 

UPDATE:  Chuck Todd at First Read is absolutely right as to why Akin won't exit the race any time soon (h/t JB):

Put yourself in Akin’s shoes. No one in Washington wanted him as the GOP nominee in the first place (even if they didn’t try to get the person they wanted), and so he owes them nothing because -- in his mind -- these folks asking him to get out didn’t help him get there. And isn’t it perfectly rational in HIS mind that he take longer than 24 hours to decide whether to stay or go? It may not be comfortable for the powers that be, but given how hard U.S. Senate nominations are to come by, it seems nuts to think he’ll simply walk away from this in 48 hours, especially since he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong other than use the wrong word.

And by the way: It's "official" -- Akin is staying in the race.

God bless him.

This Is Disappointing (But With Encouraging Updates)

I knew Todd Akin was too good to be true (from CNN):

U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, who won Missouri's GOP Senate primary earlier this month and will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November's general election, said Sunday that he misspoke when he claimed "legitimate rape" rarely resulted in pregnancy.

Answering a question about whether or not he thought abortion should be legal in the case of rape, Akin explained his opposition by citing unnamed bodily responses he said prevented pregnancy.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare," Akin said of rape-induced pregnancy in an interview with KTVI. A clip of the interview was posted online by the liberal super PAC American Bridge.

"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down," Akin continued. He did not provide an explanation for what constituted "legitimate rape."

Why am I disappointed that Akin made these insane comments? Because if he was forced to pull out of the race, then that could be disastrous for the Democrats -- he'd undoubtedly be replaced by someone who's only partially bat-shit crazy and would thus have a strong chance of beating McCaskill. And there are already many Republicans calling on Akin to withdraw from the race.

Josh Marshall gives me some hope that this won't happen:

So is Todd Akin toast? Let’s start with two pretty good axioms to follow. People can say some totally crazy crap and see it have relatively little effect on their poll numbers. People do things that are so toxic that they are not only bad for them but bad for their whole party and yet it’s still really, really, really hard to pry these folks free and get them to step aside and let someone else run.
 
I mean, really, really hard.
 
There were several 2010 candidates — including at least a couple running for senate — who totally imploded and yet it was still impossible to get them to step aside. These are nominations people have often worked their whole lives for. You don’t just walk away even if a rational analysis says you’re done.

I hope Josh is right. My main concern is that Akin made his "legitimate rape" comments early enough so that it just might be possible to replace him. Christine O'Donnell's "I am not a witch" flap didn't start gaining steam until mid-to-late September 2010 and by then it was too late for the GOP to do anything about it.

UPDATE:  Steven Benen took a look at the Missouri statutes, and MRS 115.359 states that Akin, if he wanted to withdraw from the race, would have to do so by tomorrow.  Let's hope Akin is either unaware of this statute or has such a huge ego that he has no immediate intent to withdraw, his party be damned.

One thing I know about these Tea-Bagging GOP religious zealots is that they have almost as much contempt for the Republican Establishment than they do for Democrats, meaning that Akin would probably ignore calls from the GOP to withdraw.  Plus, Akin might just want to stay in the race even if he was sure he'd lose, just so he - for the next two-and-a-half months - could expose the electorate to the same kind of horseshit that he spewed yesterday.  These assholes love to preach.

UPDATE II:  Here's another encouraging development:  Fox News has instituted a virtual blackout when it comes to covering the Akin dust-up, meaning that a lot of Republicans are receiving little or no information about it.  That may change as more and more Republicans demand that Akin withdraw, but so far Fox has little interest in dispiriting the GOP base. 

Usually it's a bad thing that so many Americans get their news only from Fox, but this time that fact might actually help the country.

An Interesting Take on Biden's Recent "Gaffe"

Russ Baker at Salon suggests that Joe Biden's recent comment that the Republicans "are going to put y’all back in chains” was not really a gaffe, but something else.  Baker notes that Obama did not actually disassociate himself from Biden's remarks but insisted that the comments were legitimate, and then argues:

There is no question that Joseph Biden has a long history of putting his foot in his mouth. But the mere expectation that everything he says is accidental or ill-conceived also puts him in a good position to put out material that actually helps Obama. And it is not as if Biden is completely incapable of memorizing his lines—or at least reading them off a teleprompter.

Maybe these most recent remarks were mistakes. But mistakes tend to come in debates, in response to questions, not in prepared speeches. And these seem to have been prepared remarks, a carefully calculated effort, as with all good speeches, to create some theatre—and to include at least one “hot” phrase that will get picked up by the electronic media. There is simply no point to having Biden speak to a live audience without considering how to multiply the ultimate audience by a factor of thousands. And no point to having him speak at all unless he has some zinger that will appeal to news producers and headline writers.

I think Baker's analysis is spot-on.  I have no doubt that Biden, in an attempt to refer to the GOP talking point that Obama needs to “unshackle” small businesses and the economy, was in fact trying to introduce a racial component into the argument, a "dog whistle" if you will.  It's kind of like when Newt Gingrich called Obama the "food stamp president" (wink wink nudge nudge) or when Rick Santorum famously said,"I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

Well, that comment from Santorum really isn't a good example because he actually used the phrase "black people" (a no-no) instead of GOP-approved dog-whistle phrases like "welfare queen," "shared Anglo-Saxon heritage,” "voter fraud," or  "where's the birth certificate?"  Biden's big mistake?  He did not repeat the GOP talking point word for word but used the word "chain" instead of "shackle," thus reducing the effectiveness of the reference to GOP rhetoric.

But let's face it -- when it comes to dog-whistling, Joe Biden is no Newt Gingrich.

Racist . . . Scumbag . . . Traitor

Former Navy SEAL Larry Bailey, who founded the anti-Obama group Special Operations Speaks, had this to say the other day about our Commander-in-Chief:

"I have to admit that I'm a Birther.  If there were a jury of 12 good men and women and the evidence were placed before them, there would be absolutely no question Barack Obama was not born where he said he was and is not who he says he is."

Bailey also added that the President is "a born red-diaper baby" and "a socialist" who "believes that America is responsible for most of the problems in the world and he wants to cut her down to size."

Well, while we're in the process of "admitting" stuff, I have some things I need to admit. I have to admit that this Bailey character is a racist piece of shit. I was thinking of prefacing such an admission by stating that "although I respect his service to our country . . ." (or some such thing), but the fact is that I don't respect his service to our country.

In fact, if there were a jury of 12 good men and women (unlike Bailey's Obama jury, this jury would have minorities on it) and the evidence was placed before them, there would be absolutely no question that Larry Bailey, during his military service, routinely displayed cowardice in the face of the enemy, no doubt soiled himself at the mere thought of combat, and any wound he received while in uniform was self-inflicted. And I'm sure this jury would also determine that Bailey urinates on the American flag at every opportunity and is a secret Al Qaeda sympathizer.

Where is my evidence, you ask?  I'll tell you this much:  My evidence that Bailey is a racist, anti-American, pro-Al Qaeda, pants-crapping, flag-urinating coward is at least as strong as his evidence against our President. 

I hope this Bailey asshole likes very warm places, because he has a special one waiting for him in the Infernal Regions.

The Simple Reason Why the GOP's Medicare Attacks on Obama Won't Work

Steve Benen nails it:

What is Medicare? It's a massive, government-run system of socialized medicine. It's wildly popular, very successful, and one of the pillars of modern Democratic governance.***

[T]he left loves Medicare and always has; the right hates Medicare and always has. For liberals, the system is a celebrated ideal; for conservatives it's an unconstitutional, big-government outrage in desperate need of privatization.

In 2012, once we get past all of the talking points and attack ads, we're left with this: Romney/Ryan wants you to believe they're the liberals. No, seriously. Think about what the Republican presidential ticket, Fox News, Krauthammer, Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee have been saying all week: those mean, rascally Democrats cut our beloved Medicare and voters should be outraged.

In other words, the argument pushed by the most right-wing major-party ticket in a generation is that Barack Obama is a left-wing socialist who wants government-run socialized medicine and that Barack Obama is a far-right brute who wants to undermine government-run socialized medicine.

This would sort-of be akin to Obama accusing the Republicans of wanting to expand the availability of abortions by getting the federal government to pay for them. Nobody in this country would believe such an accusation because Republicans have historically opposed abortion.  Well, most have anyway.

And speaking of off-the-mark GOP attacks, a group of former U.S. military and intelligence officers appear in a documentary released on Wednesday asserting that the Obama administration has taken too much credit for killing Osama bin Laden.  I find this line of attack hilarious for several reasons:

• I simply haven't heard much if anything from the Obama campaign lately on this whole bin Laden killing deal.  I've been critical of Obama for not claiming enough credit for taking out that sonofabitch and have been surprised by his campaign's lack of interest in touting this huge success.  Maybe this lack of interest on Obama's part explains why these wannabe Swift Boaters waited until mid-August to begin their assault.  Perhaps they were waiting for the President to raise the issue himself; and when that didn't happen, they decided to launch the attack anyway.

• Everybody knows that if the raid to take out bin Laden had failed, these same assholes would be attacking Obama for being weak when it comes to defending this great country from The Terrorizers.  Geesus, prior to bid Laden's death, Dick Cheney routinely criticized Obama on national security issues, even to the point of accusing the President of "pretending" we're not at war. And Newt Gingrich actually stated back in 2009: "In the Obama administration, protecting the rights of terrorists has been more important than protecting the lives of Americans."  Does anyone think all these attacks would have stopped had the bin Laden raid failed?

• Running ads attacking Obama for taking too much credit for killing bin Laden has the interesting effect of repeatedly reminding voters of something that the President's campaign seems reticent to talk about, namely, that Obama killed bin Laden. Thanks for all the free advertising, folks.

The bottom line:  These Neo-SwiftBoaters -- and most of the rest of the GOP -- are mad as hell that Obama was able to pull off his politically-risky raid to get bin Laden.  I have no doubt that these guys would rather see bin Laden still at large so they could attack the President for not being able to get him.

Quotes of the Week

"[T]he strategists there in the Obama campaign have got to look at a diplomatic way of replacing Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary. And I don't want to throw out that suggestion and have them actually accept the suggestion because then a Obama-Hillary Clinton ticket would have a darn good chance of winning."

- Sarah Palin

"I think it might be wise [for Obama to replace Biden on the ticket] but it's not going to happen obviously, for a whole variety of reasons."

- John McCain

OK, let me see if I've got this straight:  The worst VP nominee in history -- and the person who chose the worst VP nominee in history -- both think that Obama should replace Biden with Hillary on the ticket. Sounds to me like the smart move for Obama would be to not do what these characters are recommending.

This Article Really Pissed Me Off

From Politico:

The race for the White House has grown so toxic that it’s become a top topic among reporters and analysts covering the contest — and some are even calling on President Barack Obama and presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney to call a truce.

“You thought last week was bad? Just when you thought last week’s third-grade insults were as low as the campaign could go here, here we go again, the campaign has gotten even uglier,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said Wednesday. “It’s not faux outrage, it’s real outrage. Over the last 24 hours, the attacks from both sides have reached a new level of vitriol.”

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien said the campaigns struck a new note of negativity. "Romney and Obama campaigns going on the offensive at the same time? What that means is nasty rhetoric, really nastier than ever,” she said this morning.

On Fox News, veteran political reporter Brit Hume said the attacks were some of the worst he’s seen since covering politics, a sentiment shared by other experienced correspondents.

“This is about as ugly as I’ve seen it get,” Hume said Tuesday night on Fox. “I think some of the things that have been said about Mitt Romney, and… that Harry Reid allegation are just unbelievable. I’ve rarely seen something like that from somebody as senior as the Senate majority leader.”

Well boo fucking hoo. I can guarantee you that if this was a normal election -- and by normal I mean an election wherein the GOP viciously launches false attack after false attack while the Democrats just sit there and passively take it -- then you wouldn't be hearing shit from these media bastards about how "toxic" the campaign is. All you'd be hearing about is how effective the GOP's campaign has been and how ineffective the Democrats are.

But things have changed.  Now we have a Democrat in the White House who not only fights back, but seems to enjoy keeping Romney on the backs of his heels by constantly going on the offensive.  And that's what these media assholes don't like.  

Christ, the above-quoted Soledad O’Brien practically admitted that this was the case when she said:  “Romney and Obama campaigns going on the offensive at the same time? What that means is nasty rhetoric, really nastier than ever.”  In other words, O'Brien is apparently used to only one party (i.e., the Republicans) going on the attack, and cannot handle the fact that the Dems have finally grown a pair and are willing to do what it takes to win this election.

But I'm delighted with the tone of this campaign.  I can't get enough of it.  In fact, my only piece of advice to the Democrats is to take their current level of aggressiveness and increase it a thousand-fold.  That would almost make up for all those elections where the Democrats acted like a bunch of cowards in the face of hostile GOP bullshittery.

The Summer of Republican Discontent

John McCain had this to say on Fox News Sunday about the Obama Campaign:

“I’ve got to give them credit, they have succeeded to a certain degree, of painting — with nothing but attack ads — Mitt Romney into something that’s not an acceptable alternative, because he can’t run on his record.”

Well, Obama and his people can't take all the credit.  Romney was already pretty unlikeable prior to becoming the presumptive GOP nominee, and his catastrophic overseas trip didn't help his image much.  But the Democrats have indeed done a spectacular job of defining Romney in a way that makes him less palatable to the American people, so much so that it forced Romney to make the game-changing pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate instead of a less risky choice for VP.

It must be frustrating for Republicans right now. We have a Democratic president whom the GOP hates and who should be vulnerable given the sluggishness of the recovery, yet Obama currently enjoys sizable leads in many national polls and is leading in a great majority of swing state polls. 

Sure, I know it is still early and polls don't mean a whole lot right now; but the Romney Campaign and its billionaire buddies have spent something like $100 million in ads attacking Obama, yet it is Romney's poll numbers that are on the slide.  Of course, it doesn't help that the presumptive GOP nominee is disliked by nearly everyone and is running so scared that he won't release his tax returns -- even though Romney insisted that his potential VP picks provide their returns --  and won't give us any specifics as to what he'd do if elected.

Just a few months ago, Republicans not happy with Romney could find some comfort in the strong chance that the Democrats would lose control of the Senate in November.  But it now looks like the Senate just might stay Democrat given that the GOP has decided to award Senate primary wins to Radical Tea-Baggers, particularly in races that the Democrats are most vulnerable.  Some of these Tea-Baggers, such as Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin, make folks like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle look look like Marxist-Leninists.

Oh, and by the way, you can put this one in the "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" column:

Mitt Romney, battered by Democratic attacks over his Bain Capital record and taxes, is calling on President Obama to agree to a truce over his business career.

“Our campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature,” Romney said, according to excerpts of an upcoming interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd released Friday.

I think it is hilarious that a guy who crushed his opponents in the GOP primary by running a very negative campaign is now whining about the same thing being done to him. Newsweek was right -- Romney is a wimp.

Rick Santorum Was Right About Mitt Romney

Last February, Rick Santorum said this with regard to Health Care Reform and the Individual Mandate: "The problem is, we have a candidate . . . who is the worst possible person in the field to put up on this most fundamental issue in this campaign, and that is Gov. Romney."  Andrea Saul, Mitt Romney’s campaign press secretary, proved Santorum right today. 

Saul is under fire from the Radical Right for stating, in response to an ad wherein a laid-off steelworker blames Romney for his family losing health care:

“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.”

Oops. In a normal universe, it would be no big deal for a presidential candidate's press secretary to tout her boss's signature legislative achievement during his only stint in political office. In fact, one would expect such a thing to happen on a regular basis.  But not so in the Tea-Bagger Universe.

The Right Wing Extremists in this country -- aka the Republican Party (given that there are no moderates left in the GOP) -- are up in arms over Saul's comment.  This is what Erick Erickson at Redstate had to say about it:

[T]he Romney campaign decided to sabotage itself with a mind numbingly bit of spin that may mark the day the Romney campaign died. * * * Conservatives have put aside their distrust of Romney on this issue in the name of beating Barack Obama. They thought he and his campaign team had gotten the message and the hints. Consider the scab picked, the wound opened, and the distrust trickling out again.

About the only thing more stupid in terms of building bridges with the right would be to say something nice about fetal stem cell research.  Start your watches for that one!

The Washington Examiner’s Phillip Klein tweeted this today: “Not sure if the Romney camp realizes what a huge opening they’ve just created for Ds on Obamacare.”

The only thing that would make all this GOP anger even more hilarious is if the whole Individual Mandate concept was originally a Republican idea.  Oh wait -- I forgot:  The whole fucking thing was originally a Republican idea.

Quote of the Week

"It's like Robin Hood in reverse. It's Romney Hood."

- Barack Obama, commenting on Romney’s proposed tax plan, which gives a tax cut for the richest 2 percent of Americans and pays for it by raising taxes on the middle class.

Why does Romney let himself fall into these traps?  Because he's afraid to give too much information about himself or his policies, and that allows Obama and the Democrats to fill in a lot of  blanks.  Mitt's refusal to release his tax returns is also a great example of this.

Keep It Up, Harry -- Part II

Steve M. explains why it doesn't matter whether Harry Reid has a source who says that Romney paid no taxes for ten years:

[E]ven if it's a lie, Reid's put Romney on the spot, because what he's saying sounds plausible to a lot of people.

Y'know, it's a bit like saying that the current president is a secret Muslim socialist who lied about his U.S. birth and has a fake Social Security number and is secretly plotting to take away all privately owned guns if he's reelected, either before or after he finishes the job of deliberately destroying American capitalism. It's also a bit like saying that the previous Democratic president was a drug dealing serial murderer and rapist whose lesbian wife had her male lover killed when she wasn't hanging sex toys on the White House Christmas tree.

It's almost like that. * * *

Fucking-A.  As I said yesterday, Republicans pull this kind of shit day in and day out.  They just can't stand it when the Democrats do it to them.

Keep It Up, Harry (With Update)

Harry Reid is catching a lot of criticism for recently stating -- based on an unnamed source -- that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years. Jon Stewart has even attacked him on it.  But I couldn't be more pleased with what Reid is doing.  In fact, the only thing that would make me happier about this line of attack is if I had heard that there really wasn't a source for this allegation and that Harry Reid made the whole thing up.

Why would that make me more happy? Because it would show that the Democrats are starting to get serious about the upcoming election and are now willing to do something that the Republicans have been doing for years, i.e., make shit up.

My "favorite" making-shit-up moment for the GOP -- and there have been many such moments -- happened back in 2004, when Assistant Clackamas County District Attorney (and Swift Boat Liar) Al French signed a sworn affidavit (which, by the way, was subject to the penalties for perjury) asserting that Senator John Kerry received his Purple Heart medals "from negligently self-inflicted wounds in the absence of hostile fire." French, however, later admitted that he made the whole fucking thing up (which was pretty obvious anyway given that he was not in Vietnam at the same time as John Kerry), stating that he was instead relying on the account of trusted friends.

As far as I know, French was never punished for perjuring himself with regard to John Kerry, and as far as I can tell, there is no downside for Harry Reid even if he was just making the whole thing up about Romney not paying a decade's worth of taxes. Reid seems to know that his line of attack won't hurt him politically because he has doubled down on it despite the ongoing criticism.

Why will there be no political repercussions for Reid?  Because he's convinced that Romney will not release any more tax returns, and Reid is right about that.  Mitt's campaign has decided that it was far better for him to not release these returns than it would be to release them, which can only mean one thing:  his tax returns are toxic.  If they weren't toxic, they would have been released a long time ago.

It really is as simple as that.  As Sam Stein and Ryan Grim point out at Huffington Post:

[T]here is limited political downside to the type of open speculation that Reid is making, so long as Romney refuses to budge on the issue of his tax returns. Increasingly, other Democrats are growing more assertive in their goading. In an appearance at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland argued that he could openly speculate as to whether Romney "is a tax avoider" or "cheat" because "his behavior invites such speculation."

GOP Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said it best about Romney: "[I]f we're still talking about this in September, he's in deep trouble."

UPDATE:  Democratic Strategist Bill Buck has some interesting speculation concerning Senator Reid's unnamed source:

It is likely that Senator Reid’s source shares the Mormon religion with Reid and Romney.  That message will not be lost on Romney. If the Bain fortress is not a fortress; if people are talking, Romney knows that trouble lies ahead.

And the motivation for this leak may not be political. It is likely personal and tied to the Mormon Church.

Specifically, if Romney was hiding money from the IRS he may have hidden money from his church.  It is expected that members of the Mormon Church tithe a minimum of ten percent of their incomes. But if Romney was not paying taxes and hiding money, then his disclosure – which itemizes deductions, including to the church – would tip off his actual income to the IRS. ***

Some have speculated that Romney’s donations to the church might be a problem with the American public. Perhaps it is Romney’s shortchanging of his church that is Mr. Romney’s concern.

That's some great speculation there, and as noted above, Romney has invited it.

Telegrams From Kenya: The Barack Obama Story

Racists sure say the darndest things. Here is what Rep. Steve King (R-IA) came up with yesterday concerning Barack Obama's supposed Hawaiian birth:

We went down into the Library of Congress and we found a microfiche there of two newspapers in Hawaii each of which had published the birth of Barack Obama. It would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of Barack Obama being born in Hawaii and get that into our public libraries and that microfiche they keep of all the newspapers published. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some other explanations on how they might’ve announced that by telegram from Kenya. The list goes on. But drilling into that now, even if we could get a definitive answer and even if it turned out that Barack Obama was conclusively not born in America, I don’t think we could get that case sold between now and November.

I heard someone on television say today that if a person was really going to go through all the trouble to make it look like an infant was born in Hawaii -- just on the off chance that this kid might want to run for President someday -- then why would they give that infant the weird-sounding name "Barack Hussein Obama"?

That's a good question. I mean, did they simply neglect to put much thought into what they'd name this future president?  Did planning the whole telegram from Kenya part of the scheme simply consume too much of the conspirators' collective brain power?

Are We Looking At "The End Times" For The Republican Party?

How did Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) -- a "former CIA officer, Air Force pilot, 14 years elected office in the state, and * * * a genuine conservative who once advocated executing juveniles" --  how did this guy not only lose the Texas GOP Senate Primary but lose it by big numbers? Well, that's easy -- the Baggers ran someone who was actually to the right of Dewhurst (as impossible as that might sound) and were therefore able to brand Dewhurst as ... wait for it ... a moderate:

When Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) launched his U.S. Senate campaign, he immediately became the man to beat. Indeed, it really wasn't supposed to be close. * * *  The deep-pocketed Dewhurst also enjoyed the backing of three-term Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the state GOP establishment.

When the primary was held in May, Dewhurst won by double digits, but came short of the 50% threshold, leading to a runoff against former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz. And last night, after the dust settled, Dewhurst had lost to Cruz by nearly 14 points.

How'd this happen? The short answer is that the race pitted the Republican establishment against the GOP's Tea Party base, and in a runoff election, highly-motivated ideologues are the ones who turn out in greater numbers. Though Cruz lacked Dewhurst's flush bank account, he also thrived thanks to outside investments from right-wing groups like the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks.

But a closer look shows a dynamic that's arguably more important. Just as in Indiana, where Sen. Dick Lugar lost a Republican primary, despite a very conservative voting record, because he demonstrated a willingness to compromise, Cruz labeled Dewhurst as a "moderate" because the lieutenant governor was willing to talk to those he disagrees with.

The phrase death throes is defined as "the final stages of something before it comes to an end or fails completely" or "uncontrolled shaking and twisting movements of someone who is dying in pain." I think that is what we are witnessing here -- the death throes of the Republican Party.

Think about it -- in 2008, the GOP was trounced in the General Election, mostly because its fucked-up policies caused the Great Recession. Many expected that the party would moderate in response to this defeat and move away from espousing the far right policies of the Bush/Cheney era.  After all, that is how a political party survives a crushing defeat.

But not this time. Instead, the party decided that death was preferable to moderation and chose instead to become even more radicalized than it was during Bush II, so much so that it oftentimes became a race to the right for many of its "moderate" members.  A good example of this was when Mitt Romney -- who at one time in his political career supported gay rights and a woman's right to choose -- adopted a position on immigration that was clearly to the right of Rick Freaking Santorum's position.

I think the GOP as a whole knows that its days are numbered demographically and is doing its best to delay the inevitable.  That is why you are seeing stuff like the Citizens United case and the voter suppression tactics being employed on a massive scale across the country by Republican lawmakers.  It's all designed to keep this dying party on life support as long as possible.  In the meantime, we get to watch the GOP throw off its moderates as it spasms to hang on to life for just a little while longer.  Of course, this death process was clearly helped along by the election of not only a Democrat as President, but a Black Democrat.

One of these days, America will go full Schiavo and finally pull the plug on the GOP.  And that day cannot happen soon enough.  Let's just hope that this dying party doesn't pull the whole country down with it.