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.

Quote[s] of the Week

"I realize that there will be some in the Fourth Estate, or whichever estate, who are far more interested in finding something to write about that is unrelated to the economy, to geopolitics, to the threat of war, to the reality of conflict in Afghanistan today, to a nuclearization of Iran. They’ll instead try and find anything else to divert from the fact that these last four years have been tough years for our country.”

- Mitt Romney, blaming his now-legendary Overseas Cluster-Fuck on the Media. And speaking of the Media, here is another great quote from Team Romney:

"Kiss my ass --  this is a Holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect."

- Traveling Romney press secretary Rich Gorka, responding to reporters who tried to ask Romney about some of the mishaps on his trip.

The $10,000 Question (With Update)

Joan Walsh asks whether Romney's catastrophic trip to London is evidence of something more than an odd personal style or a strong feeling of entitlement on Mitt's part:

I’ve found myself wondering over the course of the campaign whether Romney has some kind of personality disorder, so dissociated does he occasionally seem from the well-worn routines of normal human interaction. Maybe we should be asking to see his medical records and not just his tax returns. I don’t mean to be flippant about that or insensitive to any kind of problem he may struggle with. But his struggles are our struggles; he’s running to be our president. There is something very odd about Mitt Romney.

Maybe Mitt is relying too much on his campaign advisers and not enough on his gut, and that is why he is acting strangely. Didn't Al Gore have a similar problem when he ran in 2000?

UPDATE:  Perhaps Romney is in fact suffering from a personality disorder.  My theory that he might be relying too much on his advisers during this overseas trip does not seem to hold water given these facts:

Romney’s top political advisers stayed home, though chief strategist Stuart Stevens flew to London to join the entourage Friday. The only senior communications aide on the ground to help Romney navigate the public-relations controversy that erupted following the Olympics readiness comments he made Wednesday to NBC News was press secretary Andrea Saul.

And by the way, the Cock Koch Brothers now believe (apparently) that climate change is real and it is man-made. Too bad they didn't come to that conclusion 12 years ago, when we could've done something about it.

My Favourite Tweets So Far Concerning Romney's Disastrous London Trip

Most of these are from #Romneyshambles:

Mitt Romney retroactively cancels visit to London.

Dear America: in the future if you want your candidates vetted, just send them to London.

Remember, Mitt Romney is in London with advisors & a full staff - he didn't build those gaffes on his own.

England! We're sending you Michele Bachmann next. We've got a million of them!

At this point, it would be an improvement for Mitt if he tested positive for steroids.

I don't always travel to England, but when I do, I remember to insult the populace. Stay Republican, my friend.

The trip was meant to make him look presidential... it made him look like Mr. Bean.

According to my friends in Gloucestershire, Brits are already beginning to call Mitt Romney "the American Borat."

Mitt Romney makes George Bush look like Aristotle.

Another verdict from one Romney meeting: 'Apparently devoid of charm, warmth, humour or sincerity'

Serious dismay in Whitehall at Romney debut. 'Worse than Sarah Palin.' 'Total car crash'. Two of the kinder verdicts

Romney achieves what no amount of BBC propaganda could - uniting the Brits behind London Olympics!

Mitt for President? Peter Sellers and Being There come to mind.

The 1% just can't catch a break

Did Romney just single-handedly make foreign policy into a 2012 campaign issue? Put another way -- do we really want this guy to represent America overseas? Or put yet another way:  Do we really want this guy to answer that Three AM Call?

Smooth Move, Mitt

Wow:

Mitt Romney’s big international tour got off to a rocky start Thursday morning, as British officials including Prime Minister David Cameron took offense at the Republican candidate’s criticisms over London’s preparedness for the Olympics.

Romney expressed wariness over England’s ability to pull off the Olympics without a hitch, as well as reservations over security. ***

“We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world,” Cameron said. “Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”

What's Romney going to do when he gets to Israel, claim that the Holocaust didn't actually happen?

The Tea-Baggers Can Go Fuck Themselves

I am so very tired of these people:

Conspiracy theories about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin being linked to the Muslim Brotherhood publicly dribbled down to the lower echelons of conservative politics this week, with an Arizona Tea Party leader promising to launch a recall effort against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for his defense of Abedin.

Last week, a group of Republican lawmakers led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) drew widespread condemnation from both sides of the aisle for the loosely sourced contention that Huma Abedin, the Muslim-American wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

McCain strongly pushed back against this charge, taking to the Senate floor to call the allegations "nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman."

Wes Harris, the founder and chairman of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party, now says McCain's words have given him grounds to mount an effort to unseat the longtime senator.

The Asshole Harris added that Senator McCain is an "embarrassment," then laid out all of the reasons why he -- Harris -- hates Muslims so much, then concludes by saying this about Senator McCain: “Go to hell, Senator, it’s time for you to take your final dirt nap.”

I can tell you this much:  I dislike this Harris character even more than he apparently dislikes brown people.  I think he and his fellow Tea-Baggers are racists and they should be treated as such.  Any group that wanted to intentionally bring down the American economy just to prove a fucked-up political point clearly hates America, and I'm just glad to see mainstream Republicans finally having the balls to stand up to these traitors.

Other than that, I have nothing against the Tea-Baggers.

And by the way, the aforementioned attempt by the Tea-Baggers to bring down the American economy (also known as the Debt Ceiling Crisis of 2011) ended up costing taxpayers $1.3 billion.

Can Romney's Campaign Tolerate Over Three More Months Of This?

I don't think it can:

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He'll either have to release more returns or drop out of the race.

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.