Best Anti-Romney Ad Yet . . .

Yes, I actually think this ad is more effective than the one Obama put out featuring Romney singing America the Beautiful, and that was an excellent ad:

Is It Time For Romney To Also "Retroactively Retire" From the Salt Lake City Olympics?

I guess we now know why Romney was unwilling to join the bipartisan chorus of criticism concerning the manufacturing of U.S. Olympic uniforms in China:

For the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly promised on the trail to "get tough" on China, opposing the manufacturing seemed a likely stance, except that while at the helm of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Romney outsourced the production of torchbearer uniforms to Burma.

For Romney, the 2002 Olympics anecdote represents another instance of outsourcing under his stewardship, as President Barack Obama's reelection team continues to assail him for shipping jobs overseas while at private equity firm Bain Capital. It also exposes an embarrassing oversight in allowing the uniforms to be manufactured in Burma, which until just last year was controlled by a brutal military regime.

OK, let's see if I've got this straight: Romney's campaign cannot refer to Mitt's Governorship of Massachusetts because during his four years in that post, his state was 47th out of 50 in job creation, as Governor he supported a woman's right to choose (his words), and he enacted RomneyCare (nka ObamaCare). He also won't be able to campaign using his tenure at Bain Capital because of all the outsourcing and bankruptcies his company caused. Now it looks like he can't use his experience running the 2002 Winter Olympics because he outsourced in that endeavor as well.

It's a real problem for Romney -- given that he is running out of things to say about himself during the rest of the campaign. Maybe he can claim he took a leave of absence from the Olympics at the exact time someone else made the decision to outsource the uniforms to a brutal military regime?

One thing is for sure:  The GOP elite is so frustrated right now with how the campaign is going that they are practically using the "N" Word to describe Obama. Former New Hampshire Gov John Sununu spit out the following attack on the President this morning on . . . where else -- FoxNews:

"He has no idea how the American system functions. And we shouldn't be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S., he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago."

Sununu also added:  "I wish this president would learn how to be an American."  Translation:  Obama is not only a Negro -- he's a foreign Negro!

Say What? (with update)

Mitt Romney is getting pressure -- from both Democrats and Republicans -- to release more of his tax returns.  How does he respond to it?  By bravely attacking a woman:

“John McCain ran for president and released two years of tax returns,” Romney explained. “John Kerry ran for president. You know, his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. Somehow this wasn’t an issue.”

The problem with this particular line of attack? John Kerry's wife was not the Democratic nominee in 2004 -- John Kerry was. And Kerry released twenty years of tax returns.

By the way, because I'm enjoying Romney's Bain Capital/Tax Return Scandal so much, I've been watching a lot of Republicans being interviewed on it, and I can tell you this: Pretty much every Republican interviewed on this issue does the exact same thing. Here is my take on the standard GOP approach in answering such questions:

Q. Governor So-and-So -- do you think Mitt Romney needs to release more tax returns?

A. Well, that's up to Mr. Romney, but let me just say that Barack Hussein Obama and his socialist-fascist-Kenyanist policies are destroying this country. Obama clearly hates America, he's an evil man, and will raise your taxes, take your guns away, and has no record to run on. Did I mention he's from Kenya and that he is probably a Muslim and was no doubt heavily involved in the planning of the 9-11 Attacks and probably flew at least one of the 9-11 planes personally and then . . . .

Q. But Governor, back to the issue at hand: Is Mitt Romney hurting his campaign by refusing to release more tax returns?

A. No he's not, but the question you should be asking is why does Barack Obama hate Israel so much . . .

Just watch one of these interviews if you don't believe me. Bottom line:  These guys really must think Romney is in trouble right now.

UPDATE:  There can be no doubt that the GOP's most famous drug addict, Rush Limbaugh, feels that Romney is in big trouble right now.  Here's what Limbaugh had to say about Obama today, right on cue:

"His father was a communist. His mother was a leftist. He was sent to prep and Ivy League schools where his contempt for the country was reinforced. He moved to Chicago. It was the home of the radical-left movement. He hooks up to Ayers and Dohrn and Rashid Khalidi. He learns the ruthlessness of Cook County politics.  This is what we have as a president: A radical ideologue, a ruthless politician who despises the country and the way it was founded and the way in which it became great.  He hates it."

Are you getting the impression that Rush is a little flustered right now?

First We Get The "Etch-A-Sketch Moment" from Camp Romney . . .

. . . and now we get the concept of retroactive retirement:

This Political Wire tweet says it all: "Romney campaign comes up with worst talking point ever." It comes as a reaction to the appearance of Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, on CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley. Gillespie told Crowley on Sunday that Romney, who has faced a slew of criticism this week over when exactly he left Bain Capital, "retired retroactively" from Bain.

Interestingly, the Romney Campaign's attempt to redefine Mitt's 1999 "leave of absence" from Bain as a "retroactive retirement" is a great example of yet another Romney Etch-A-Sketch moment. Gillespie said the exact same thing on Meet The Press this morning, so this is clearly a talking point that the Romney Campaign is intentionally pushing and not an example of someone misspeaking.

Do you know why Romney and his people have lost control of this situation? Because instead of admitting that some outsourcing occurred under Mitt's watch, they decided to come up with this elaborate explanation as to why a company's sole shareholder, sole director, chief executive officer and president -- who, by the way, was being paid a six-figure salary at the time -- really had no control over what was going on at Bain when the outsourcing was occurring.  As RomneyCo is learning the hard way, their attempt to explain all this away simply does not withstand even minimal scrutiny.

To use an Olympics analogy, it would be akin to a team trying to perform an intricate synchronized swimming routine only to have someone drain the pool while they are attempting it.  There's no water in the pool anymore, Mitt -- it's time for you and your people to climb out and dry off.

Of All the Political Ads So Far . . .

. . . this is the one that will most piss off the Republicans:

 

I've often criticized the Democrats for being politically gutless, but I won't be doing that today. It's a brilliant, memorable, and vicious ad.

UPDATE:  Here is the best analysis I've read yet as to why Romney's story regarding Bain Capital adds up to nothing more than a metric fuck-ton of horse-shit.

Quote[s] of the Week

"[H]as any candidate for president ever had a resume that shrinks during the campaign instead of expanding? If so, I can’t much remember it."

- Ed Kilgore, noting that Romney can't campaign using his governorship of Massachusetts (because it he didn't do anything notable as governor except pass RomneyCare); and now, according to Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Virginia), Mitt can't use his Bain Capital experience either.

And here is a great quote from Former President George H. W. Bush:

"The rigidity of those [no new tax] pledges is something I don’t like. The circumstances change and you can’t be wedded to some formula by Grover Norquist. It’s—who the hell is Grover Norquist, anyway?"

And by the way: How do you know that the Romney Campaign thinks it's in trouble with regard to the Bain Capital Shit-Storm? This should be the first clue: "Mitt Romney will sit down for interviews with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News on Friday, according to multiple reports."

Romney rarely makes appearances on non-Fox news shows, and now he is making four of them in one day. Wow.

Is it too late to find another presumptive GOP nominee?

Fox's Chris Wallace Crushes Mitch McConnell On Health Care Reform (With Update)

I'll bet you McConnell didn't see this coming:
 

Excellent interview. It demonstrates beyond any doubt that the GOP has no interest in providing health insurance to the 30 million Americans currently uninsured, and that is why the radical right is so pissed off at Obama right now.

ObamaCare, although not perfect, is a step toward providing universal coverage, and the Republicans hate that.  Christ, they are still pissed off that we have such things as Social Security and Medicare in this country.

And speaking of FoxNews, Bill O'Reilly finally apologizes for being an idiot.  Better late than never, I guess.

UPDATE:  Hunter at Daily Kos makes this point better than I ever could, so here it is:

It is not Chief Justice John Roberts' fault that he did not get the memo that government forcing people to hand over money to private insurance companies or pay a tax penalty for not doing so is now not a conservative idea, but a fount of liberalism and evil. When he was nominated, that idea was the conservative stance on healthcare. Hell, it was considered the "conservative" approach even by the likes of Newt Gingrich, and was eventually put into practice by none other than the severely conservative Mitt Romney. Choosing the devoutly corporatist approach would seem a perfectly reasonable conservative opinion, in any other circumstance but this one; you can forgive Roberts for being a bit flummoxed as to what is being expected of him. * * *

So fine, Roberts is now getting plastered for ostentatious liberalism, and all because he didn't realize that conservatism dictates that even deeply conservative ideas are bad if there's a bit of partisan gain to be had in saying so. In every other case, he toed the conservative line, but this one was the important one, so now he's a pariah. Now he's even a liberal.

It demonstrates quite a few things, I think. It demonstrates how yesterday's conservatives can become tomorrow's supposed "liberals," in the eyes of the conservative movement. It demonstrates the flip-flopping required of conservative intellectuals in order to retain favor with a party for whom consistency is readily tossed aside according to whatever election-year needs might gain more advantage.* * *

I oftentimes wonder what would have happened had Mitt Romney won the 2008 Republican nomination and then won the presidency. He obviously would have advocated that RomneyCare be enacted on the national level, but would the Republican Party have backed him up on that?

I think he would have had universal GOP backing because (1) he's a Republican, (2) he's a white guy, and (3) the Individual Mandate is a fucking Republican idea.  And the Republican Party would have done a much better job at selling it.

What's The Difference Now, GOP? (with update!)

Prior to last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling, the GOP's main argument as to why ObamaCare is different from RomneyCare was that RomneyCare is constitutional whereas ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Given that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared ObamaCare constitutional, what's the run-of-the-mill Obama-hating Republican supposed to say now?

If GOP Senator Marco Rubio's recent attempt to differentiate the two laws is any indication, the Republicans generally -- and Romney specifically -- are going to have a tough time on this issue. Incredibly, Rubio stated on Thursday (and I'm not making this up):   "[Romney] supported it on the state level, which means if you didn’t like it in Massachusetts, you could move to another state."

If the Republican Party is really going to push ObamaCare as a major issue during the General Election, then it must come up with a better answer than that.  The real difficulty for the GOP, of course, was summed up by Rick Santorum last February when he said with regard to health care:  "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."

UPDATE: I guess you can place this one in the Holy Shit! category:



Romney and Obama agree! The Individual Mandate is not a tax (starting at 1:26 in video), despite the fact that the entire radical right-wing echo chamber has been screaming for the last several days that it is a tax:

CHUCK TODD (MSNBC): What you just said is that Governor Romney agrees that it's not a tax. But you guys call it a penalty.

ERIC FEHRNSTROM (TOP ROMNEY AIDE): The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court. He agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice Scalia which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax.

TODD: So ... I think we're talking around each other. The governor does not believe the mandate is a tax, that's what you're saying?

FEHRNSTROM: The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court's ruling that the mandate was a tax.

TODD: But he agrees with the president that it is not, that you shouldn't call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?

FEHRNSTROM: That's correct.

Let's see how long it takes the Romney Camp to reverse itself on this one.

Historic ObamaCare Quote of the Week (With Updates)

"This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it's going to be struck down. All of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong."

- CNN legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin, on March 27, 2012.

I hope Toobin learned his lesson on this one, namely, what happens during oral argument in an appellate case is not usually a good indicator of what a court will ultimately decide.

Bottom line here:  The Individual Mandate was a conservative idea cooked up by Republicans, and a conservative court upheld it.  I expect that Mitt Romney will take full credit for ObamaCare any day now.

UPDATE:  And while we're on the topic of historic quotes regarding health care reform, here's what Senator (and legendary Obama hater) Jim DeMint said back in 2007 about RomneyCare:

"Well, that's something that I think we should do for the whole country."

Yes, he actually said that in 2007.  But here is what that piece-of-shit DeMint is saying today:

“I urge every governor to stop implementing the health care exchanges that would help implement the harmful effects of this misguided law. Americans have loudly rejected this federal takeover of health care, and governors should join with the people and reject its implementation.”

DeMint is a flip-flopping, racist, and seditious asshole.

UPDATE II:  This video shows my favorite "reaction" so far to the Supreme Court's health care decision.  Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), who may be the dumbest person in Congress, originally thought -- thanks to shitty CNN reporting -- that ObamaCare had been ruled unconstitutional. Here is how she reacted when she thought the law had been thrown out:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hopefully there is a video out there of how she responded when she learned the truth because I'd love to see it.  I have no doubt the Court's decision ruined her whole day, and that makes me very happy.

And by the way, if you haven't done so already, turn on FoxNews and watch the "fair and balanced" folks on that channel react to the ObamaCare decision.  You'd have to go all the way back to Mussolini's death to find this much sadness amongst the Radical Right Wing.

Republican Tells Truth About GOP Voter Suppression Scheme

This is refreshing:

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years. Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done."

- Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai.

This Is Hilarious

From Bloomberg:

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign asked Florida Governor Rick Scott to tone down his statements heralding improvements in the state’s economy because they clash with the presumptive Republican nominee’s message that the nation is suffering under President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the matter. Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named. What’s unfolding in Florida highlights a dilemma for the Romney campaign: how to allow Republican governors to take credit for economic improvements in their states while faulting Obama’s stewardship of the national economy. Republican governors in Ohio, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin also have highlighted improving economies.

Oh, and by the way, it is now official: Richard Mourdock is a fucking idiot.

Reverse Birtherism?

At least one Birther is now saying that Obama is an American citizen. Well, I guess that's a step in the right direction:

The top election official in Arizona, fresh off his flirtation with birtherism, has moved on to a strange new conspiracy theory involving President Barack Obama.

Secretary of State Ken Bennett says he’s convinced Obama was born in Hawaii, but he now believes the president fraudulently claimed to be born in Kenya so he could get into college. He also believes the president has spent millions of dollars since then to cover it up. * * *

By the way, a recent poll asked this question: "Which of the following statements best describes your view on whether Barack Obama was born in the United States?" 55.6% of Republicans responded "I have always believed President Obama was born in another country."

In other words, half the members of the GOP are racist. No wonder Republican politicians feel the need to suck up to these folks on a regular basis.

I Didn't Think This Story Could Get Any Better . . .

. . . but it has:

Federal campaign regulators brought the hammer down on disgraced former Sen. Larry Craig on Monday, accusing him of misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to pay for his legal defense following an arrest in a Minneapolis airport bathroom sex sting. The Federal Election Commission filed a federal lawsuit against Craig, who now works as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., asking a judge to order the former lawmaker to pay back his campaign committee more than $200,000 and stop him from raiding the committee for his own personal use.

This guy should have his own TV show.

This Graph Says It All

Right On The Money

By the way, it's great to finally have a president who actually did inhale.

This Is For Anyone Out There Who Still Thinks Pakistan Is our Ally

Fuck them:

The Pakistani medical official who ran a fake CIA vaccination programme to help find Osama bin Laden has been jailed for 33 years. A spokesman for Khyber Agency, an administrative unit in Pakistan's restless frontier, said Dr Shakil Afridi would face decades in jail – despite calls from senior US officials to release the man who helped with efforts to track down the al-Qaida chief. 

The tough sentence for the former surgeon general of Khyber will be taken as another sign of the terrible state of US-Pakistan relations. And it will further alarm western critics of Pakistan who say the country has put far more effort into trying to understand how US spies and special forces were able to plan and launch the Bin Laden raid than into how the al-Qaida leader was able to remain for so long in the Pakistani army garrison town of Abbottabad. The sentence was announced just days after Barack Obama snubbed the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, by refusing to hold a formal meeting with him at the Nato conference in Chicago. 

In January Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, said he was "very concerned" about the arrest of Afridi after Pakistan's intelligence service discovered he had set up a fake hepatitis B vaccination scheme with his nurses going from house to house in Abbottabad in the weeks before the raid on Bin Laden's hideout in May last year. "For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think it is a real mistake on their part," Panetta said in January. ***

I am so very tired of these people. Given that bin Laden was holed up in a compound located in a military town, there is no doubt in my mind that some pretty high up people in the ISI -- Pakistan's premiere intelligence agency -- and in the Pakistani military knew that Osama was living in Abbottabad.

We should find out who those people are, then do the same goddam thing to them that we did to bin Laden. What was it that George W. Bush said again?

Vial Of Ronald Reagan's Blood To Be Auctioned

From Reuters:

Ronald Reagan's foundation expressed outrage on Monday at a British company's auction of what it says is a vial of the late U.S. president's blood taken at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.

You know what this means, of course: if they have a vial of Reagan's blood, that means they just might clone him. Finally, we have a real shot at getting a true liberal back in the White House.

This is Hilarious

I love this:

One of the more amusing things revealed last week when Arizona’s secretary of state came out as birther curious was that Hawaii officials just simply don’t believe he’s qualified to investigate Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Sure, Ken Bennett says he’s the man in charge of deciding whether President Obama is eligible to be on Arizona’s ballot in November, but the response from people in Hawaii’s government has been: Prove it. In essence, they’re giving Bennett a taste of his own medicine, making him jump through a series of hoops to prove he has the legal authority to investigate the matter. . . .

Hawaii's response to Arizona's birther secretary of state:  “We need more information to substantiate that you are eligible to receive verification.”

Anyone else out there think that the state of Hawaii is getting a little tired of all this racist horseshit?

Thought For The Day

If someone has to come out and deny that he is a Birther, it probably means that he is a Birther.

Historic Quote of the Week

“If Dick Lugar -- having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy -- is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”

- John C. Danforth, a former GOP senator from Missouri, in 2010.

I guess the Republican Party is way beyond redemption at this point:  Tea-Bagger Richard Mourdock easily defeated Lugar in yesterday's GOP primary in Indiana.

Senator Lugar, in his concession statement, warned that Mourdock's "rejectionist orthodoxy" and "unrelenting partisan mindset" would lead to even more gridlock. Mourdock's response:

Well, what I've said is that I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view. [...] Bipartisanship means they have to come our way....

Well, a hearty Sieg Heil to you too, Asshole.

Pretty Much Says It All

Quote of the Week

Can you imagine what Bush would have done if he had gotten bin Laden?  I mean, this is a guy who played dress-up to celebrate a war he lost.  If he had gotten bin Laden, he would have spent his whole second term in a Batman costume.

And poor Mitt Romney -- trying to make hay out of this.  Mitt Romney -- who is on record saying he would not waste money going after bin Laden -- on record saying he would not violate Pakistan's border to get bin Laden. -- this week said: "Of course I would have gotten bin Laden."  Even his Etch-A-Sketch went, "Seriously?"

-- Bill Maher, commenting on the GOP criticism of Obama for having the nerve to run for president by using his accomplishments as President.

And while we're on the subject, this is hilarious.

We've Come A Long Way

Nine years ago:

Today:

Change We Can Believe In (And Obama Can Politically Exploit)

“I assume we’re angered by use of military successes for political campaigns because none of us were alive in 2008 or 2004.”

- Republican consultant and former Bush speechwriter Josh Trevino.
 
This is exactly what I was thinking as I was listening to all the Republicans criticize the Obama campaign for using the bin Laden killing in political ads.  Although the GOP probably did not invent the idea of using military and foreign policy successes for political purposes, they certainly perfected it during the Bush/Cheney years.  In 2003, George W. Bush actually pranced around in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier muttering "mission accomplished" and then declared the end to major military operations in Iraq -- and the war resulting from that colossal foreign policy fuck-up would continue on for another eight years!

Christ, GOP operatives would even make shit up in order to tout their party's national security "successes" while criticizing their opponents. Remember the Fort Hood shootings in late 2009, when Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 29 others?  Republicans went out of their way to brand that event as a "domestic terrorist attack" and then the GOP Echo Chamber followed up that effort by going on television in a desperate attempt to re-write history. 

After the Fort Hood shootings, Rudy Fucking Giuliani appeared on Good Morning America and actually stated: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama."  In November 2009, former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino similarly commented on FoxNews that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."  Not to be outdone by all this bullshittery, GOP political consultant Mary Matalin stated on CNN in December 2009 that the 9-11 attacks occurred during Clinton's presidency: "We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history. And President Bush dealt with it."

For those of you who were sleeping during the last decade, the 9-11 attacks occurred on Bush and Cheney's watch, nine months into their presidency.  These attacks took place after Bush and Cheney were repeatedly warned by outgoing Clinton people that Al Qaeda would be the incoming Bush Administration's top national security priority and then after being specifically warned by the CIA in August 2001 that bin Laden was determined to strike targets in the United States.

And if that isn't enough GOP failure for you, Bush and Cheney then let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, took their eyes off the ball in Afghanistan by deciding to invade Iraq, then -- in 2005 -- actually dissolved the CIA unit focused on the capture of bin Laden.  Obama, of course, re-started our effort to get bin Laden, and then actually killed that sonofabitch, accomplishing in less than two-and-a-half years what Bush and Cheney couldn't do in eight.

Face it GOP:  You guys fucked up big time when it came to protecting our country from terrorists, and Obama succeeded where you failed.  You all need to deal with the fact that this truth will come up from time to time during the run-up to the General Election.

A Bumper Sticker That Pretty Much Says It All

This bumper sticker goes after Romney in two ways. Mitt is, of course, famous for his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op/ed he wrote in 2008, but he also opposed pursuing Osama bin Laden:

The Obama campaign isn’t shy about using the raid that killed Osama bin Laden as a political cudgel. But the White House’s record may get a boost from the GOP’s choice of nominee, whose previous presidential campaign included a spat with fellow Republicans over the relative unimportance of catching the Al Qaeda leader. In the campaign’s first major election speech on foreign policy, Vice President Joe Biden made extremely prominent use of an April 2007 Romney quote on bin Laden, in which he told the Associated Press “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” “I was a little more direct,” Biden said in his speech. “We will follow the SOB to the gates of hell.”

Back in 2007, Obama famously stated that if he had actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan and President Musharraf wouldn't act, then he would. Romney attacked Obama for that comment, comparing him to Dr. Strangelove.  Obama followed through on his campaign promise by sending Seal Team 6 into Pakistan to kill bin Laden without giving the Pakistanis a heads-up on the raid.

I'm glad to see that the Obama Campaign is going to make Romney pay for his weak position with regard to fighting terrorism.  I can't wait to hear Mitt try to explain this one away.

By the way, this is hilarious:

John Dingell is the longest currently-serving member of Congress (and the third longest-serving ever). The acerbic 85-year-old Michigan Democrat had long been contemptuous of Tea Partiers. He found them unruly and difficult to get along with. Dingell tended to refer to them as “tea baggers,” a phrase that has an alternate sexual meaning. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem in the hall of Congress, but when Dingell was booked to appear on The Daily Show with John Stewart, his staff felt the need to finally warn and educate him. When his chief of staff shared the other meaning of “tea bagger” with Dingell, the Congressman went through three different stages of reaction. At first, he said “hah,” then said “that’s disgusting,” and finally the octogenarian congressman reached the plain of acceptance and said, “It’s funny and I’m going to keep using it.”

A Surprising Benefit of Romney's Attempt to Shift To The Middle

Will this presdidential election season bring at least a temporary end to gridlock in Washington? It is early yet, but it sure seems that way. 

Student loan interest rates are about to go up in a big way, and President Obama is currently making a push for a continued low rate on these loans:

Courting college voters, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Congress needs to keep the cost of college loans from skyrocketing for millions of students, taking an important election-year message to three states crucial to his bid to hold onto the White House.

Obama told students at the University of North Carolina that he personally understood the burden of college costs, noting that he and first lady Michelle Obama had "been in your shoes" and didn't pay off their student loans until eight years ago.

"I didn't just read about this. I didn't just get some talking points about this. I didn't get a policy briefing on this," Obama said, recalling he and his wife shared a "mountain of debt" not a long time ago. "When we married, we got poor together."

My first thought on reading this is that there is no way the GOP will support Obama's proposal. After all, they haven't agreed with him on anything, even to the point of rejecting Republican ideas (e.g., Pay-Go, the Bipartisan Deficit Commission, the Individual Health Care Mandate, Cap and Trade, trying terrorism suspects in federal court) merely because Obama embraced them.

Well, the incredible just happened. The de facto leader of the Republican Party just embraced one of Obama's ideas:

"I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students," Romney said Monday, a day before five states hold primaries, though he did not offer specifics on how the extension should be paid for or how long it should last. He said he supports the extension because of "extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market."

In other words, Romney's need to shed his self-described severe conservatism in order to appeal to moderate voters may actually cause something to get done in Washington.  It's one thing for the GOP to oppose everything Obama supports, but it is going to be hard for Republicans to go against their presidential nominee during the run-up to what will undoubtedly be a very close General Election.

As politics go, this is a pretty amazing turn of events, and I hope -- for the country's sake -- we see more of it.

My Biggest Problem With Obama?

That's easy: He enacts health care reform -- the first president to do so after a century of other administrations trying and failing -- and then literally does nothing to promote it. The result of this failure is that the GOP has been able to frame ObamaCare as socialist legislation that will hurt small business, even though the centerpiece of the legislation -- the individual mandate -- was originally a Republican idea that the GOP proposed in order to solve the health care crisis while at the same time preserving the private market place.

I recently witnessed first-hand the result of Obama failing to promote his own policy. I was talking to a Republican friend of mine about ObamaCare, and this guy -- who is a small-business owner -- whipped out the GOP talking point that it hurts small business. I responded that it doesn't do so at all because the legislation contains health care tax credits for small business. My friend's response? He told me he did not know that.

This is Obama's fault, plain and simple; and ironically, this failure to promote his own legislation is actually hurting small business:

4.4 million small-business owners are now eligible for health care tax credits, yet only 360,000 have used them. These credits cover 35% of health care costs for small-business owners and up to 50% starting in 2014.

It's easy to be pissed off at Republicans for openly lying about ObamaCare, but being mad at the GOP over this is like being mad at a shark for biting your arm off. After all, prominent members of the GOP are openly bragging about their party's refusal to compromise with Obama and the Democrats on anything, and Mitch McConnell flat-out stated a couple years ago that the goal of the Republican Party is simply to defeat Obama in 2012.

So it should come as no shock to anyone that the GOP is lying about ObamaCare, and it's the president's duty to respond to these lies by promoting his own legislation. Obama has failed miserably in that regard.

Finally

From Mike Luckovich

The Soon-To-Be-Legendary "Etch-A-Sketch" Gaffe

I think they're gonna be talking about this particular Romney gaffe for a long time:

Now that he’s a few steps closer to winning the nomination, is Mitt Romney about to wipe clean all that he has said during the tough nomination fight?

Comments by his top communication’s adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, suggest maybe so. And the “Etch A Sketch” gaffe, as it’s already known, has stirred a hornet’s nest on Twitter and a blast of criticism from Mr. Romney’s top rivals.

Speaking on CNN Wednesday morning, Mr. Fehrnstrom was asked if the campaign worried that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich “might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election.”

To which Mr. Ferhnstrom responded: “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again.” * * *

Christ, what is it with these people? Just when they start getting some momentum, something like this happens. I can see Romney making such a gaffe -- he's a walking gaffe machine. But his advisors should know better.

The DNC jumped all over this, and so did the Santorum and Gingrich camps. I'm not sure yet, but I have a feeling this will end up being remembered right up there with Dukakis in a Tank and the Dean Scream.

In fact, it's even worse than Dukakis in a Tank because it's pretty hard to waive around a tank during a campaign speech. But Etch-A-Sketches are easy to waive around, which is exactly what both Santorum and Gingrich did on the campaign trail today.

Then again, Romney didn't commit the gaffe himself, so that might help a bit. But handing your political opponents a prop like an Etch-A-Sketch is inexcusable.

Quote of the Week

"I’ll repeal Obamacare on my first day in office."

- Mitt Romney.

That's going to be a pretty busy first day in office for you, Mitt, given that before you'll be in the position to repeal ObamaCare on that first day, you'll initially need to find some way to abolish both the House and the Senate -- all on your first day. Good luck with that.

Obama Crushing GOP Re: Latino Vote

The results of this FoxNews poll was released a couple weeks ago, but it continues to get a lot of coverage on the Internets, and for good reason:

Despite growing disappointment in his handling of immigration issues, Latino voters favor President Barack Obama by six-to-one over any of the Republican presidential hopefuls, showed a Fox News Latino poll conducted under the direction of Latin Insights and released Monday.

The national poll of likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obama’s performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the healthcare debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively. ***

[T]he poll shows that the overwhelming choice among likely Latino voters is President Obama. In head-to-head match-ups none of the GOP candidates would garner more than 14 percent of the Latino vote come November, the poll said.

As Steve Benen points out, McCain lost the Latino vote to Obama by a whopping 36 percentage points in 2008. But according to the FOX poll, Obama's advantage over Romney now stands at 56%. When you combine this number with the fallout the GOP is currently experiencing with women -- Obama enjoys a 20 percentage point lead over Romney with female voters -- my only conclusion is that Romney will have to name a Latino or a woman as his running mate.

Porn Again?

What is it with this guy?

Rick Santorum has garnered quite a bit of attention recently for his animated remarks against pornography, and on two separate Sunday shows the Republican presidential candidate refused to cede an inch, doubling down on his crusade against “hard-core pornography.”

A recently added section on the candidate’s website declares that America is “suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography,” and laments that the “Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.” The site goes on to say that the Justice Department “seems to favor pornographers over children and families.”

Asked to defend this odd claim, Santorum argued Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that the Justice Department is not enforcing pornography laws as rigorously as President George W. Bush’s DOJ did.

Although I thought it was strange that Santorum made those comments on porn recently, I just figured it was a one-shot deal to pander to his fellow members of the American Taliban. But it now appears that Santorum wants to really push this issue.

This Is Interesting . . .

Oral arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 2010 health-care law begin in a little over a week, and this Wall Street Journal piece details how difficult it is to score a seat for the proceedings. I found this intriguing:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, who helped draft the law, and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a top-ranking Republican on the Judiciary committee, say they have confirmed seats.

Senator Hatch, like all Republicans, currently opposes ObamaCare's central feature, the Individual Mandate. But this wasn't always the case:

Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would have required it.

Hatch more than merely supported the Individual Mandate -- he actually co-sponsored a bill (first introduced the late Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I.) that would have included it:

Chafee's plan, one of several Republican alternatives, created a universal tax deduction for health insurance and gave the poor vouchers to buy policies. It also required everyone to buy insurance -- an individual mandate.

Chafee's plan was backed by a group of Republican senators, including Hatch, according to news reports from the time. When the plan was formally introduced as legislation, Hatch was one of the co-sponsors. Two other current senators also co-sponsored the plan: Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.

The huge GOP flip-flop on the Individual Mandate is, in my opinion, the biggest under-reported political story since the under-reporting that occurred during the run-up to the Bush Administration's debacle in Iraq.

ObamaCare is probably the most important piece of social legislation enacted in a generation; so one would think it would be a big story that many of those who are now virulently opposed to the law once supported its central feature. Christ, even Radical Right-Wing Extremist Senator Jim Motherfucking DeMint (R-WV) -- who famously pronounced that the GOP was going to "break" Obama on this issue and that it would be the President's "Waterloo" -- actually supported an individual mandate on the national level as recently as 2007!

A major theme of the Obama reelection campaign should be that Republicans are so hell-bent on obstructuing Obama that they have willingly flip-flopped on issues that they not only once supported, but were once their ideas in the first place. There are many such examples of this, but the flip-flop on the mandate should be Exhibit A for the Obama team when it comes to the issue of GOP obstructionism.

Quote of the Week

"I always believed that when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter. Because all you're doing is reading someone else's words to people. You know, when you're running for president, people should know not what someone's writing for you after they've had pollsters and speech writers test it."

Rick Santorum.

I love how Republicans are always going after Obama because he uses teleprompters. Of course, what they are trying to imply is that this poor, unfortunate Negro is such an idiot that he can't even string a few sentences together without help from a machine -- and what they are hoping when they make such an attack is that nobody in their audience has ever watched an Obama press conference or tuned in to the 2008 presidential debates.

I like what Jonathan Chait had to say about all this:

[T]he Republican war on TelePrompTers has poetically backfired. It began as a quasi-racist meme among the fever swamps of the right, a way for right-wingers to express their belief that Obama is a brainless talking doll. By catering to it, Republicans backed themselves into a position where they can’t use TelePrompTers at all. The result is a series of rambling election night speeches that manage to be at once frightening and dull. The speeches, like the race, just go on and on and on.

Fucking-A.

I Like Bill Maher . . .

. . . but he's dead wrong on this issue:

Bill Maher continued to diminish Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke and attack liberals for overreacting. On his HBO show last night, Maher said that liberals should “put this in perspective… a guy made a bad joke.” He added in that in America “sometimes you’re made to feel uncomfortable.”

Actually, Limbaugh launched hateful attacks against Fluke seventy times over three days. You can watch all of Limbaugh’s attacks on Fluke here. He doesn’t appear to be joking.

Maher insisted that he was not, in fact, defending Limbaugh but “defending living in a country where people don’t have to be afraid that they might go out of the bounds for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesmen?” * * *

Look, I understand what Maher is trying to say, but in saying it he's equating himself with Rush Limbaugh, and there really is no comparison. I doubt Maher gets many calls from Democrats apologizing because they said something negative about him. Maher is a comedian, for Christ's Sake.

Limbaugh, however, is always receiving apologies from Republicans who criticize him -- an example can be found here -- and the reason he receives such apologies is because Limbaugh is the de facto head of the GOP -- at least he was prior to the recent dust-up.

Holy Shit!

I haven't posted at all on Rush Limbaugh's problems with sponsors -- I've been laughing so hard over it that it's been difficult to take a break to blog -- but this is certainly worth a post:

The fallout over Rush Limbaugh’s controversial comments about a Georgetown University law student continues. After dozens of sponsors said they would no longer advertise on The Rush Limbaugh Show, Thursday’s New York broadcast included five minutes of silence and an advertising lineup consisting almost entirely of public service announcements.

The dead airtime was spread out over four instances during the three-hour broadcast. WABC 770 AM in New York was silent for two and a half minutes before the show, save for one ad, then again near the end of the show’s first hour. Hours two and three each contained one minute of silence each, reports Think Progress.

Super Tuesday Prediction

The two states that Santorum has the best chance to win -- Ohio and Tennessee -- will both go to Romney, which will mark the end of Santorum's campaign and will essentially mean that Romney becomes the GOP's de facto nominee. Santorum was recently ahead in both states -- and still has a lead in some polls -- but Mitt has the momentum now.

In other words, the campaign for the General Election will start on Wednesday, which is fine with me. Bring it on.

Santorum had a shot at prolonging this thing, but he blew it by focusing on loser social issues for the GOP -- such as contraception -- and he helped damage the GOP brand in the process:

Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion.

Additionally, when asked to describe the GOP nominating battle in a word or phrase, nearly 70 percent of respondents – including six in 10 independents and even more than half of Republicans – answered with a negative comment. * * *

And perhaps most significantly, the GOP primary process has taken a toll on the Republican presidential candidates, including front-runner Mitt Romney, who is seen more unfavorably and whose standing with independents remains underwater.

Conservative Website RedState Finds A Gem From Romney's Past

I enjoy checking out Right-Wing websites and television when things are going badly for the GOP, and this last week was definitely a bad one for Republicans. This post from Erick Erickson at RedState is pretty interesting:

Had Michigan not been as close, the Democrats would have waited to spring this on us in the general election. Luckily we have it now and I hope Ohio voters are paying attention.

In July 2009, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in USA Today urging Barack Obama to use an individual mandate at the national level to control healthcare costs.

On the campaign trail now, Mitt Romney says the individual mandate is appropriate for Massachusetts, but not the nation. Repeatedly in debates, Romney has said he opposes a national individual mandate.

But back in 2009, as Barack Obama was formulating his healthcare vision for the country, Mitt Romney encouraged him publicly to use an individual mandate. In his op-ed, Governor Romney suggested that the federal government learn from Massachusetts how to make healthcare available for all. One of those things was “Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others."

Needless to say, this is a disaster for the Romney Camp. Mitt, all throughout the current campaign, has taken the ridiculous position that RomneyCare was right for Massachusetts but wrong for the country. Now it turns out that he encourage Obama to pass RomneyCare on the national level, which is essentially what ended up happening.

We'll see if this particular story gets any play during the run-up to Super Tuesday. If it does, then it could affect the outcome of some of this Tuesday's too-close-to-call primaries (like Ohio and Tennessee).

Quote Of The Week

“Republicans being against sex is not good. Sex is popular.”

- Veteran Republican strategist Alex Castellanos.

The Big Takeaway From Last Night's GOP Primaries?

That's easy -- if the Republicans want to continue their War on Contraception, they'll do so at their peril:

CBS's exit polls show 37 percent of Catholic voters in Michigan supporting [Santorum] and 43 percent supporting [Romney]. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul won 8 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Meanwhile, CNN exit polls in Arizona show Romney besting Santorum among Catholic voters by a margin of 41 percent to 35 percent.

Remember -- these were GOP primaries; and even though Michigan was open to members of other parties, six in ten who voted there were Republican. One would think that Santorum, the poster boy for the anti-contraception movement, would have crushed as far as the Republican Catholic vote is concerned.

The fact that he lost the Catholics to Romney in both states should be setting off warning bells in the GOP about their War on Contraception. If it's a losing issue in GOP primaries, then they're going to get killed on this in the General.

I still expect them to drop this issue soon. It's true that Republicans suck at governing and have shitty ideas when it comes to policy, but I doubt the party is going to commit political suicide over The Pill.

Obama's Best Speech In 2012 So Far

Man, if this is a preview of the General Election campaign, I say bring it on:

Isn't Obama Supposed To Be The Elitist In This Race?

From ABC News:

The Democratic National Committee is suggesting that Mitt Romney made another out of touch remark this morning during a tour at the Daytona 500 in which Romney said that while he does not “closely” follow racing he does “have great some friends who are NASCAR team owners. ”

The remark came during a tour of team owner Richard Childress’ facilities, when Romney was asked by an Associated Press reporter whether he follows car racing.

“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans, but I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners,” Romney responded.

Santorum: A Flip-Flopper For The Ages

"President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor. That's why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image."

- Rick Santorum, February 25, 2012.

"In addition to Rick’s support of ensuring that primary and secondary schools in Pennsylvania are equipped for success, he is equally committed to ensuring the every Pennsylvanian has access to higher education. Rick Santorum has supported legislative solutions that provide loans, grants, and tax incentives to make higher education more accessible and affordable."

- Rick Santorum's 2006 Senate Campaign Website.

Christ, what's Santorum going to attack next, apple pie?

From Jim Morin

And speaking of Santorum, you can put this one in the "Are You Fucking Kidding Me?" file:

Rick Santorum believes Obama wants to 'indoctrinate' students by encouraging higher college enrollment. The GOP hopeful sat down with Glenn Beck for a wide-ranging interview that aired Thursday, and he warned that higher education leads to secularization.

“I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely," he said. "The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”

Look, I can understand that Glenn Beck has an interest in keeping Americans uneducated, but I can't believe that a person running for President of the United States would actually say something like that on the record.

Car Czar Calls Out Romney On His Bailout Horseshit

This is pretty great:

The auto czar who led the bailout, Steve Rattner, has a simple challenge to Mitt Romney’s claim that private investors could have rescued Detroit: find me one.

Rattner, writing in the New York Times, wrote on Friday that Romney’s contention that American automakers didn’t need federal loans to move them through a managed bankruptcy intact is ludicrous given that the only financiers big enough to step in were barely hanging on for dear lives themselves.

“I know this because the administration’s auto task force, for which I was the lead adviser, spoke diligently to all conceivable providers of funds, and not one had the slightest interest in financing those companies on any terms,” he wrote. “If Mr. Romney disagrees, he should come forward with specific names of willing investors in place of empty rhetoric. I predict that he won’t be able to, because there aren’t any.”

Romney, who will be the eventual GOP nominee for president, is going to get crushed by Obama on this issue in the General Election. It'll be fun to watch.

And speaking of Romney, one gets the feeling that his campaign expected more people to show up at this rally at Detroit's Ford Field:

Quote of the Week

"They're not against it. If you're not against it, you're for it."

- Indiana state Rep. Bob Morris (R), in response to a request for proof to support his claim that the Girl Scouts support abortion rights.

OK, Let Me See If I Got This Right . . .

Paul Babeu, an Arizona county sheriff and Republican congressional candidate who is stridently opposed to illegal immigration, actually threatened his Mexican ex-lover with deportation when the man refused to promise never to disclose their relationship.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?

A Terri Schiavo Moment . . . On Steroids

After watching Republicans step on their own dicks yesterday on the contraception issue -- and then today watching Senators Boxer and Gillibrand make Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Cal) pay a heavy price for his political malpractice in handing the Democrats this picture:


. . . I'm more convinced now than I was last Sunday that this is indeed a Terri Schiavo Moment for the GOP. In fact, calling it a mere Schiavo Moment may be understating the situation because that particular debacle had little if any effect on presidential politics, or even Mid-Term election politics.

I remember this lack of effect well because I was complaining in early November 2006 that Schiavo was barely registering as an issue in the run-up to the 2006 Mid Terms, even though Howard Dean promised it would be a big issue for Democrats. But the GOP's current contraception disaster is different because it is actually unfolding during an election year.

And the timing couldn't be worse for Republicans. As Greg Sargent noted yesterday from recent polling data: "After unmarried women dropped off for Dems in 2010 and were slow to return to the Dem fold in 2011, Obama is now approaching the 70 percent he won among them in 2008." If Obama is already nearing 70% support in this group, imagine how much support he'll have from unmarried women if the GOP continues to push this issue.

That's why I don't think Republicans will continue their War on Contraception much longer. Darrell Issa got his ass handed to him yesterday, and Rick Santorum is bat-shit crazy when it comes to birth control. He is absolutely opposed to it -- period. Go here if you don't believe me. And if these views get widely circulated, I think this issue could ultimately hurt Santorum even though it is arguably helping him now.

Bottom line: The GOP picked the wrong time to push on what is clearly the weakest position that social conservatives espouse. I still can't believe they think this is a winner for them.

Smart Move By GOP

From TPM:

Lawmakers sealed the deal late Wednesday night on yearlong extensions of the payroll tax cut, unemployment compensation and Medicare physician payment rates. It’s a political victory for President Obama and the conclusion of a no-win situation for Republicans that they were eager to move past.

The agreement was announced by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the two lead negotiators in conference committee. Final votes are expected by the end of this weekend.

The conclusion comes at the end of a grueling series of negotiations that spilled over from last year. That led House Republicans to this week drop their demand that the payroll tax cut be offset with spending cuts elsewhere, paving the way for the agreement as the two sides had been deadlocked on pay-fors.

Although a definite win for Obama, this does help the GOP in the long run because Republicans have never been able to adequately explain why tax cuts for the middle class have to be offset by spending cuts while tax cuts for the rich need not be paid for. I think some folks in the GOP finally saw the Big Picture -- i.e., they realized that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of the year, and it was therefore probably unwise for them to insist that tax cuts be paid for.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled program about how Republicans are fucking idiots:

I still can't believe that the GOP is trying to make contraception into a wedge issue. That's a losing battle for them, and it doesn't help that morons like Santorum-supporter Foster Friess are out there talking about it.

From Mike Luckovich

Romney Has No Choice Now

He'll have to viciously attack Santorum, even though Republican leaders recently urged Romney to refrain from such attacks:

Two new polls out today show Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney in Michigan, the state where the former Massachusetts governor was born and believed to have an advantage.

An American Research Group poll shows Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, leading Romney 33% to 27% among likely GOP voters. Santorum's lead over Romney is 15 percentage points in a Michigan survey by Public Policy Polling.

Incredible. Most commentators still believe that Romney is the front-runner; but if he loses Michigan, I have no doubt he'll lose that front-runner status to Santorum.

And with regard to my previous post on the contraception debate, it looks like the trap that Obama set is rapidly closing on the GOP:

While GOP senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pledged to fight the Obama’s administration’s modified regulation requiring health insurers and busnisses to offer contraception coverage without additional cost sharing, the revised rule “appears to have won over” two of the five Republican women senators.

Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) — both of whom have sponsored legislation requiring insurers to offer contraception benefits in all health plans — are in favor of the new compromise, which would allow religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals to avoid providing birth control. Their employees will still receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer.

Well-played, Barack.

The Contraception Trap

"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles."

- Sun Tsu.

I've lost count of how many times I've criticized Obama on something and it turned out that Obama did the right thing. I was certain that this recent "debate" on contraception would hurt the President politically; and when this issue started to gain steam, the last thing I thought was that Obama was setting a trap for the GOP. Moderate Republicans saw this trap coming from a mile away, but I did not.

Andrew Sullivan is the latest political commentator to suggest that Obama did in fact set a trap. Sullivan writes:

The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition to contraception, its weakest issue by far, and to shore up support among independent women and his more liberal base. I’ve found by observing this president closely for years that what often seem like short-term tactical blunders turn out in the long run to be strategically shrewd. And if this was a trap, the religious right walked right into it.

A friend of mine, Slic[k], stated last week that this was in fact a trap, and the goal was to create a wedge between Republicans given that RomneyCare contained a similar provision with regard to contraception. I was initially skeptical, but now I think Slic[k] was right.

As noted by Sullivan: "Romneycare can now accurately be portrayed as falling to the left of Obamacare on the contraception issue." I have no doubt that Santorum will be all over this in a few days, as will that former Pennsylvania Senator who is currently pursuing the GOP nomination (his name escapes me). Have fun trying to clean up that frothy mess, GOP.

It was certainly an elegant trap, given that it relied in large part on the GOP's refusal to agree with Obama on any issue. He gambled that Republicans would disagree with any compromise no matter how reasonable it was, and the gamble paid off big time. To paraphrase Sun Tsu, Obama knew his enemy.

Obama also successfully framed the issue as one involving contraception, and not freedom of religion like the GOP wanted. When was the last time the Democrats won a framing battle?

This debate reminds me of the Terri Schiavo debacle, the GOP's disastrous attempt to create a wedge issue based upon a wildly distorted view on the sanctity of life. Schiavo was a catastrophe for the GOP because every family in the country has either gone through something similar or knows someone who has.

Birth control presents the same type of problem for the GOP. As Sullivan notes: "Even in conservative Mississippi, a recent ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban the morning-after pill failed badly at the polls." In other words, the GOP should have seen this one coming, but did not. And neither did I.

Holy Shit!

This keeps getting better and better:

Riding a wave of momentum from his trio of victories on Tuesday Rick Santorum has opened up a wide lead in PPP's newest national poll. He's at 38% to 23% for Mitt Romney, 17% for Newt Gingrich, and 13% for Ron Paul.

Part of the reason for Santorum's surge is his own high level of popularity. 64% of voters see him favorably to only 22% with a negative one. But the other, and maybe more important, reason is that Republicans are significantly souring on both Romney and Gingrich. Romney's favorability is barely above water at 44/43, representing a 23 point net decline from our December national poll when he was +24 (55/31). Gingrich has fallen even further. A 44% plurality of GOP voters now hold a negative opinion of him to only 42% with a positive one. That's a 34 point drop from 2 months ago when he was at +32 (60/28). * * *

Although I disagree with Santorum on nearly every issue, I always get the feeling from him that he actually believes in what he is saying. I don't get that from either Newt or Mitt.

Want To Know Why There Is No Compromise In Washington?

It's because the GOP has no interest in compromise:

The first major speaker at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference . . . was Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who had a fundamental message for the base: compromise sucks.

GOPers on Capitol Hill should not be looking to work with Democrats to develop common solutions to the nation's woes, he proclaimed. Not at all. Not ever. And DeMint, with an I'm-so-clever smile, offered what he obviously thought was a killer analogy: the Super Bowl.

Referring to last Sunday's game, he said, "I can guarantee you that coach Tom Coughlin did not tell his Giants to go out on the field and work with those other guys....They weren't cooperating with Tom Brady."

DeMint explained that the New York Giants and the New England Patriots had "different goals." Consequently, compromise would not work. Continuing with this trenchant observation, DeMint noted that "compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals." You can compromise with a wife or with a business colleague. But not with Democrats: "We don't have shared goals with the Democrats."

Of course, there is nothing new here. "No Compromise!" has been the rallying cry for the Tea-Baggers for quite awhile, and the Tea-Baggers control the GOP.

What I find interesting is that members of the so-called liberal media still insist on blaming "both sides" for gridlock in Washington, when it is clear that the Republicans are not only responsible for it, but they're proud of it and openly boast about their refusal to compromise with Obama and the Democrats. It's their fucking policy, for Christ's Sake.

And the above-quoted Jim DeMint, perhaps the biggest asshole ever elected to the Senate, actually supported indivudual health care mandates as recently as 2007.

Maybe Mitt Should Lay Low For Awhile

Some results from a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll:

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney on Saturday night in Nevada, are about 3 to 1 negative.

Great Day For America, But a Horrible Day For the GOP

First, we hear that the U.S. economy added a net of nearly 250,000 jobs in January (exceeding expectation by almost 100,000), and now we find out that Susan G. Komen For the Cure cancelled its plan to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

It's only 9 am on the West Coast, and the Obama-hating Radical Right is already having its worst day in 2012 so far.

Will the GOP Base Stay At Home in November? (With Update)

What are the three most important things for the Republicans in 2012? That's easy: turnout, turnout, and turnout -- and they're coming up short on all three:

Underneath tonight’s big win for Mitt Romney in the Florida Republican primary, is a statistic that might suggest enthusiasm is flagging among GOP voters in this large and crucial swing state: turnout was actually down significantly from 2008.

In the 2008 Republican primary in Florida, in which John McCain beat Romney by a margin of 36%-31%, a total of nearly 1.95 million votes were cast.

But in tonight’s primary, turnout was actually much lower. At time of writing, with 98% of precincts reporting, the total turnout is only about 1.65 million — a drop-off of 15% in terms of the raw number of voters. * * *

I think it is interesting that South Carolina, which gave Newt a big win, actually had pretty good turnout (i.e., the GOP base showed up at the polls) whereas Florida, a state Mitt won handily, had a low turnout, as did New Hampshire and Iowa.

Republicans just aren't all that excited about Romney, and the numbers are reflecting this lack of enthusiasm. But I think there is something else going on here, namely, I don't believe there is enough hatred for Obama right now. Sure, members of Radical Right hate him (or should I say, hate the Fantasy Version of him), but that's about it.

And that's a problem for Republicans. They don't hate Obama enough. They need to work on that if they want their people to show up at the polls in November, because Romney sure isn't going to bring them in.

UPDATE: Even the Idiot Limbaugh understands this. Here's what he said this morning about Romney's "I'm not concerned about the very poor” comment:

“Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, ‘We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt.’ Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?”