All Hilarious/Horrible Things Must Come To An End

It's all over for Rick Santorum. May he live on forever on the internet.

At least we still have Newt!

Keep reaching for that rainbow, big guy!

Newt Being Newt

This might be the most Newt Gingrich-y moment of the campaign so far

Newt Gingrich apparently has been so busy campaigning all around Georgia that he hasn’t had time to sleep, or even write a speech for the AIPAC crowd.

Moments before he was set to video-stream live to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Gingrich was caught on camera dozing off, perhaps dreaming about what it would be like to be president or live on the moon  or both.

At one point, he woke up in the midst of a speech by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who addressed the conference before Gingrich.

Someone off-camera, probably referring that Gingrich appeared to be nodding off, said it was “probably the most relaxed moment you had today.”

“Listening to Panetta is not a relaxing experience,” Gingrich said, before slipping away into nap time again.
He woke up before he was  introduced for his speech and gave a short opening statement in which he promised, if elected president, to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, along with several other points.  Gingrich then opened up the floor to questions.

“I understand you have a panel. I look forward to any questions.”

Then 12 seemingly eternal seconds of silence followed. Gingrich stared blankly into the camera, and the audience stared back.

Finally the AIPAC introducer had to cut the awkward void.

“Mr. Speaker, there is not a panel,” he said. “Please do continue, sir.”

Gingrich, always the improviser, moved right along.

“Let me just say – I say this pretty briefly, I think,” Gingrich riffed. “We need a fundamental reassessment of our entire understanding of the threat of radical Islam.”

Click here for the video, because ABC News are dicks and won't let us embed it.

The Post Racial GOP

Going along the lines of the recent viral videos everyone has seen, this playlist of "Shit Republican Candidates say about Black People" is a pretty solid/extremely depressing compilation.

Click over to Dominion of New York for Kelly Virella's annotations of the videos.

Real Talk on Foreign Policy, Imperialism

Your anti-imperial message, coming from a republican presidential candidate.



Incredibly powerful stuff. Wouldn't it be nice if someone in power on our side were openly talking like that?

Interesting Reading

I'm still digesting what was written, so I'm not entirely sure what I'd comment, but Glenn Greenwald and Matt Stoller wrote two really interesting and thought provoking pieces on Afghanistan, the drug war, civil liberties, and the awkward spot  Ron Paul's candidacy puts people in.

Stoller's piece. Greenwald's piece, and his follow up to the criticism he received. Corey Robin's post on this was also very good.

Santorm Only Racist Against Blah People

We mentioned Rick Santorum's racism earlier this week. This might be the funniest/worst defense ever:

Iowa runner-up Rick Santorum said Thursday that he would be "a much bigger player" than expected in the New Hampshire primary and denied saying that he didn't want "to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

Santorum allegedly made the controversial comments when discussing welfare in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News, but he maintained that people misheard the word "black" when he stumbled on a word.

“I looked at that, and I didn't say that. If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — came out.  And people said I said ‘black.’ I didn't," Santorum said.

My question is who are these blah people, and why are they taking other people's money?

Santorumania!

Last night in Iowa...

Mitt Romney – 24.6%
Rick Santorum – 24.5%
Ron Paul – 21.4%
Newt Gingrich – 13.3%
Rick Perry – 10.3%
Michele Bachmann – 5.0%
Jon Huntsman – 0.6%
99% of precincts reporting

I actually think this can fuck up Romney more than people are predicting. Santorum is crazy, but he's actually more polished than Cain, Bachmann or Perry, who were all able to surge for about a month before plummeting back to earth. The difference here is the timing on Santorum's surge is pretty ideal, especially combined with the news that Bachmann and Perry are dropping out. (update: Apparently perry isn't dropping out. Good luck with that!)

The craziest aspect of this primary has despite the fact that Romney is the only candidate that consistently beats Obama in the polls, he has only been able to get 30% of the GOP vote. Also, looking at PPP Polling's stuff a few weeks back, Romney wasn't the top second choice of any of these people, it was very much a Paul, Romney, and everyone else type division.

If Paul had won, I think there would be a movement among conservatives to suck it up and rally around Romney and make sure the greater evil (Paul) was defeated. The current situation could actually be a lot more troublesome for Romney. If Perry and Bachmann drop out, their support is much much more likely to go to Santorum than anyone else, especially Romney. Also, I'm not really sure where Newt's support will go when he drops out, but it does seem like he's willing to sacrifice any chance of winning to destroy Romney, which won't help Newt, but it would hurt Romney.

As absurd as this sounds, I could see a senario where Santorum's surge is perfectly timed, he gains the support of the other non-Romneys once they drop out, and wins the nomination. I've been wrong about this stuff on a fairly consistant basis before, but I do think that's a possibility.

What do you guys think?

Rick Santorum: Also a Racist

Don't get how this quote hasn't gotten more attention:

At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly-white audience he doesn't want to "make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

Answering a question about foreign influence on the U.S. economy, the former Pennsylvania senator went on to discuss the American entitlement system - which he argued is being used to politically exploit its beneficiaries.

"It just keeps expanding - I was in Indianola a few months ago and I was talking to someone who works in the department of public welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don't sign up more people under the Medicaid program," Santorum said. "They're just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so they can get your vote. That's what the bottom line is."

He added: "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."

"Right," responded one audience member, as another woman can be seen nodding.


"And provide for themselves and their families," Santorum added, to applause. "The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling again."

It is unclear why Santorum pinpointed blacks specifically as recipients of federal aid. The original questioner asked "how do we get off this crazy train? We've got so much foreign influence in this country now," adding "where do we go from here?"

As I'm sure many of you know, most welfare recipients are white.

But Santorum singled out black people... at the very same time he's trying to win support of Republican base voters. Hmmmmm... can't quite put my finger on it...

Trolling, a New Campaign Tactic

I'm not posting this for any other reason than that I find it really funny:

Who inspires you to give?

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate.

Thank you for supporting this campaign, and happy holidays.

...

Really want to fire up your GOP friends? Buy them a gift from the 2012 store. I recommend the birther mugs — they get the message across pretty well.

So the article talks about this as an opportunity to list build with Republicans, which I guess kinda/sorta/doesn't really make sense. I'd prefer to laugh at the fact that their campaign is dedicating resources to something that doesn't seem to have a more worthwhile purpose than trolling Republican friends of Obama supporters.

Taking Us Back To The 19th Century

Newt Gingrich has awesome plans for this country:

Speaking at Harvard (to remind us that he's a historian, no doubt) on Friday, Newt Gingrich not only called child labor laws "truly stupid," he did so as his answer to a question about income inequality. His answer had several prongs. First, use student labor to bust unions in schools:

"You say to somebody, you shouldn't go to work before you're what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You're totally poor. You're in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I've tried for years to have a very simple model," he said. "Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they'd begin the process of rising."

"The process of rising" = Firing janitors so that kids can become janitor, which will help with their learning, because they're also janitors for the school, which is clearly a position of respect or something. Newt manages to take some pieces of libertarian thought (ownership breeds betters stewardship) and conservative ideas (Unionized janitors that have it too good!)and combines them into a nonsensical justification for getting rid of child labor laws. This is probably a good time to point people to the quote my dad sent me of Krugman saying that Gingrich is a "stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like".

Are we going to be lucky enough that reporters/other candidates don't reach into their constantly expanding Newt opposition research file during tonight's debate? I would really love to see him twist in the wind for a few more weeks, even if it's just for comedic value.

NEWT!!!

Man, the GOP race is going to strange places:

Two new national polls of the Republican primary race show very different results in the horserace, but do agree on one thing: Newt Gingrich is rocketing upwards.

The new CNN poll, among Republican respondents: Romney 24%, Gingrich 22%, Cain 14%, Perry 12%, Paul 8%, Bachmann 6%, Huntsman 3%, and Santorum 3%. In CNN’s previous poll from a month ago, Romney had 26%, Cain 25%, Perry 13%, and all others in single digits (including Gingrich at 8%).

And the new numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Gingrich 28%, Cain 25%, Romney 18%, Perry 6%, Bachmann 5%, Paul 5%, Huntsman 3%, Santorum 1%, and Johnson 1%.

So this will last about 2 weeks, until right wingers realize he made an ad with Nancy Pelosi talking about climate change, or the second anyone anywhere reads this:

After going to the doctor for a mysterious tingling in her hand, [Marianne Gingrich] was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Early in May 1999, she went out to Ohio for her mother’s birthday. A day and a half went by and Newt didn’t return her calls, which was strange. They always talked every day, often ten times a day, so she was frantic by the time he called to say he needed to talk to her.

“About what?”

He wanted to talk in person, he said.

“I said, ‘No, we need to talk now.’ “

He went quiet.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there?”

She kind of guessed it, of course. Women usually do. But did she know the woman was in her apartment, eating off her plates, sleeping in her bed?

She called a minister they both trusted. He came over to the house the next day and worked with them the whole weekend, but Gingrich just kept saying she was a Jaguar and all he wanted was a Chevrolet. “‘I can’t handle a Jaguar right now.’ He said that many times. ‘All I want is a Chevrolet.’ “

He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.

He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.

The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”

“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

In seriousness, what this tells me is that there are a large chunk of GOP voters who despise Romney and are searching for anyone (and if Newt Gingrich is leading, we mean ANYONE) to stop him from getting the nomination.

This would all be funnier if we weren't another economic downturn away from one of these asshats being president.

Sexual Harassment? Ehhh, Who Cares?

I made the point on twitter the other day that while allegations of sexual harassment may seem like a bad thing for you or I, neither one of us is voting in the Republican primary. I feel like folks on our side do this in attempting to understand the Republican party on a regular basis, and the Republican nomination is no different. In order for Cain's sexual harassment allegations to hurt him politically, they need to change the mind of people who have already decided/or are seriously considering voting for Hermain Cain for President of the United States. That is why I'm not at all surprised by this polling data:

Herman Cain entered the worst week of his presidential campaign at the top of most national polls. And for all the missteps and seething allegations of past misconduct, he is ending the week where he started—at the top.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Friday morning found the former corporate executive locked in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney in the race for the Republican nomination, Mr. Romney with 24% and Mr. Cain with 23%. The poll was taken between Monday and Thursday, just as the wave of news stories broke about allegations that Mr. Cain sexual harassed at least two women in the late 1990s while working as a restaurant lobbyist in Washington, charges that Mr. Cain denies.

The findings mirror a number of polls taken over the last month, that have shown Mr. Cain essentially locked in a tie nationally with the former Massachusetts governor. Mr. Cain’s support was up seven points from last month’s ABC News poll. A Rasmussen poll out Thursday found that 26% of likely GOP primary voters supported Mr. Cain while 23% supported Mr. Romney.

The survey found that a solid majority of Republican or Republican-leaning independents were unruffled by the allegations. Nearly seven out of 10 said the controversy would have no impact on their support for Mr. Cain, while just under a quarter said it would make them less likely to support him. Nearly six out of 10 said the allegations were not a serious matter.

That said, Mr. Cain is far from in the clear. Should the controversy continue to balloon, the pollsters warned,  “Cain’s support could be at risk,” as nearly four in 10 likely GOP voters saw the charges as serious. (Just under a quarter of Cain supporters polled regarded the charges as serious.)

It's hard to predict a group of which you're not a member (I thought Michelle Bachman could win!), and this scandal could be enough of a black eye that it dents his support based on competence issues alone. However, it is worth pointing out that 60% of Republican voters DON'T SEE ACCUSATIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AS SERIOUS!!!

Holy crap!

Herman Cain Goes Next Level

I don't want to start prematurely declaring winners for the greatest political ad of the cycle contest, but this might be the strongest entry we've ever had in the "major party, legitimate chance of winning candidate" category. I'm not exactly who the desired audience is for this ad, but I do know that it's spectacular.



For all you Tim and Eric fans out there, check out how Herman Cain's expression does a reverse baseball man at the end of the ad.

Republican Debate Thoughts

So while this is far from the first debate, this is the first one I was able to watch in non highlight form, so I figured I'd give a few thoughts.

• Romney is so far ahead of these guys in "general politician skills" it's not even funny. His exchange with Newt was probably the most devastating 1 on 1 take down I've seen in a debate. Humiliated him. I know, it's Newt, and degree of difficulty and all, but man was that brutal to watch.
• Having only read about the other debates, I didn't understand how Rick Perry could have dropped 20 points in 3 weeks. Well, that mystery is solved! He makes Bush seem articulate and knowledgeable on the issues.
• I want a framed picture of the look on everyone's face when Ron Paul brought up Iran/Contra. I'd actually pay to see cameras of each person's face when Ron Paul is speaking, just to capture their facial expressions.
• Based on the Iran/Contra thing, we need to find a way to do a Republican debate where all the questions are directly related to the things that Reagan actually did, rather than the nonsense claimed about him now. We could kick it off by asking if arming Osama Bin Laden was a good idea. 
• Cain's response to criticism of his Sim City tax plan was incoherent, and mostly about fruit. Don't know if people cared or not though.
• Bachman seemed fairly subdued. Santorm's desperate attempts to talk about his hatred of gay people was hilarious. You could tell he just wanted to yell out "listen you morons, All you used to care about was gay people and abortion!!! What happened???"
• There seems to be a strong anti-romney vote, but there isn't a warm enough body to house it. It really can't be emphasized how terrible all the other cantidates are, just in their political skills alone. Obama better hope that they can coalese around someone and take down Romney, cause I'm really starting to believe if he gets the nomination Obama is toast.
• One more thing, Anderson Cooper repeating the complete BS right wing lie that only 51% of Americans pay taxes drove me insane. I know it's a Republican debate and no facts were allowed within 30 feet of the stage, but I expect better from Anderson Cooper for some reason.

Did you watch it? What did you think?

Cuban/Hezbollah Missile Crisis!

I'm starting to feel like Michele Bachmann's campaign was put together using nothing but right wing chain letters:

At an event in Iowa on Monday, the poll-plummeting candidate warned of a new potential Cuban missile crisis — involving Hezbollah.

“And the question was asked, should we normalize trading with Cuba? Why would you normalize trading with a country that sponsors terror?” Bachmann said. “Cuba — there’s reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is potentially looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran.

“And, of course, when you’re 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don’t want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba. This would be foolish.”

As Think Progress notes, it appears that the sole source of Bachmann’s allegation is an unconfirmed report in an Italian newspaper, about Hezbollah setting up a cell in Cuba, in order to have a base of operations for targeting Israeli targets in Latin America.

Thus Bachmann’s logic appears to be: 1) Hezbollah are bad; 2) Hezbollah has missiles; 3) Hezbollah are trying to set up shop in Cuba; and therefore 4) Hezbollah could imminently set up missile sites in Cuba to target the United States.

In a field that isn't exactly light on stupid, Bachmann seems to have out crazied herself from the pack. That's impressive.

Get Sick, Then Die Quickly

Remember when the national media collectively got the vapors because Alan Grayson had audacity to point out the effects of the GOP's health care plan? For those who don't remember:



And his amazing non-apology:



Now, last night, CNN hosted a Tea Party debate for all the republican candidates. Ron Paul was asked about a hypothetical man who had a job, but didn't have health insurance, but suddenly gets ill are requires a lot of care. When pressed further about whether society should just "let him die", the crowd takes over and their response speaks for itself:




This is the Republican healthcare plan: Get sick, die quickly. Between cheering the number of executions in Texas last week and this, it has been an unpleasant reminder that we have some really sick fucks in this country of ours...

The Last Non Crazy Person Speaks

Literally, the last one. Jon Huntsman:

To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.

Oh don't worry Jon, they'll call you crazy. And it's not like you had the slightest chance of winning the Republican nomination, but well, yeah, that prayer is gone too.

On the plus side, maybe another job will open up with the Muslim usurper if he wins a second term?