Washington Extra – Etch A Sketch
Ah, if life were only like an Etch A Sketch, a little shake would allow us to erase those mistakes and messy parts. But to invoke the magical toy to explain Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes might have been a mistake, one worth erasing with a shake.
It seems that every Romney win is followed by a Romney gaffe. This time, after his Illinois victory last night, it was not the candidate who stepped in it, but rather his adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, who wanted to talk about what Romney would be like in a general election against President Obama.
“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 we start all over again,” Fehrnstrom told CNN.
Conservatives quickly jumped on the flawed analogy, telling voters that Romney would soon revert to his moderate ways. Rick Santorum told a Louisiana crowd that Romney “is going to be a completely new candidate.” His campaign even handed out Etch A Sketches to people. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, tweeted that Etch A Sketch is “a great toy but a losing strategy.”
Romney called a brief news conference, the kind in which he takes only one question, where he said: “I’m running as a conservative Republican. I was a conservative Republican governor. I will be running as a conservative Republican, at that point, hopefully, nominee for president.”
Etch A Sketch is fleeting, but campaign gaffes, they are forever.
And then there were two… Republicans exploring presidential bid
Two Republicans have now stepped up to the plate! Well, technically they have stepped up to the plate to consider stepping up to the plate.
Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the first to declare their intentions to explore a possible run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Opinion polls show they have their work cut out for them.
The two Republicans who topped the list of potential candidates that Republicans would likely support for the party nomination were not Romney or Pawlenty in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee tied for first place, 19 percent, in the survey which was conducted before Romney announced formation of an exploratory committee. That compares with 12 percent for Sarah Palin, followed by a third-place tie between Romney and Newt Gingrich at 11 percent each.
While Romney has tended to draw skepticism from conservatives, in a straw poll of conservatives taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, he had a strong second-place showing after Libertarian Republican Congressman Ron Paul.
Skeptics were out in full force a day after Romney made his presidential ambitions clear.
Political strategist Mark McKinnon in a column on The Daily Beast says Romney won’t win because of his “Tea Party misfires and connections to Obamacare…”
Pence in Detroit: A campaign prelude?
Prominent House Republican Mike Pence has been frequently mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential candidate. On Monday, he played the part.
In a speech to the Detroit Economic Club, a favorite campaign stop for many aspiring White House contenders, Pence pushed the idea of a flat tax, a rollback of regulatory standards and a constitutional amendment to limit spending to 20 percent of GDP.
“We must have a mechanism that forces Washington as a whole to make the hard choices necessary to reform our nation’s addiction to big spending and unsustainable entitlements,” Pence said, according to a prepared text of his speech.
The social conservative also said “our present crisis is not merely economic but moral in nature” and called for a renewed commitment to the institutions of traditional family and marriage.
The speech was sure to be a hit with the conservative activists and Tea Party followers who will play a big role in the 2012 Republican nominating fight.
Pence, elected to his sixth House term earlier this month, has been considered a likely candidate since he stepped down as chairman of the House Republican Conference after the election.
He was the winner of a presidential straw poll at the Values Voter summit in Washington in September, beating out more high profile conservatives like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Hey, MORON TyC- Did you have anything relevant to say, or are you just trolling again?
Washington Extra – (Blue) dog days
In the immortal words of Jonathan Swift (paraphrasing Erasmus and Hamlet) “Every dog must have his day.”
According to our correspondent Andy Sullivan, Blue Dog Democrats may have had theirs already. His report from Vermillion, South Dakota suggests the Blue Dogs may be a dying breed, their centrist brand of conservatism in danger of being swept away by the Republican tide in the midterms.
The original Dogs were actually yellow, of course, from a Southern nickname for party loyalists who would vote for a yellow dog if it were on the ballot as a Democrat. The Blue Dog Coalition took its name from the view that members’ moderate-to-conservative ideas had been “choked blue” by the party in the run-up to the 1994 election. (Suggestions for alternative color schemes gratefully received at the Democratic National Committee.)
Centrist Republicans have also been under pressure from the rise of the Tea Party. While that will likely make the next Congress more fiscally conservative, it will not necessarily translate into a bipartisan deal to reduce the budget deficit, former Congressional Budget Office director Rudolph Penner warned today.
“A real problem here is that the Tea Party is going to scare the bejeebers out of any Republican that is talking about compromise, for fear of what will happen in the next primary,” Penner told a Chamber of Commerce forum. “There is no way we’re going to get out of this problem without a compromise between the two parties.”
Here are our top stories from Washington today…
Are “Blue Dogs” a dying breed in U.S. elections?
GOP, conservatives seen dominating November turnout
Bad news, Democrats.
The crowd most likely to vote on Nov. 2 is a lot more Republican and a lot more conservative than the one that gave Congress to the GOP in 1994.
So says a new Gallup survey that forecasts Republican and conservative majorities at polling stations for the congressional mid-term elections.
Fifty-seven percent of people who call themselves likely voters are Republican or lean Republican, while 54 percent are conservative, according to Gallup.
Compare that to pre-election polling data from 1994 which showed likely voters to be 49 percent Republican and 40 percent conservative.
Meanwhile, Democrats have slipped from 33 percent of likely voters to 30 percent over the course of those same 16 years.
Liberals have grown, but only from 12 percent to 18 percent.
You get the government you deserve, so if Democrats do not go out and vote… they will get a Republican congress and deserve it.
THIS JUST IN — Conservatives Find Home in GOP
The term “conservative Republican” may seem like a truism nowadays. But a new Gallup survey answers some interesting questions about just who those conservatives are — and who they are not.
The GOP is growing more conservative. Seventy-one percent of Republicans and Republican-voting independents call themselves conservatives today. That’s up from 62 percent in 2000, when the Bush-Gore presidential election split the country down the middle and had to be settled by the Supreme Court. Conservatives accounted for 66 percent of Republicans in 2006.
The latest Gallup findings say only 29 percent of Republicans are moderates or liberals — yes, this implies the continued but perilous existence of the species known as Republican Liberals.
Conservatives are older — more than 40 percent are 55 years of age or above and thus belong to the American generation that once trusted no one over 30.
Only about one-third of Republican moderates and liberals are north of 55. Two-thirds to three-quarters of Republican conservatives are Protestant vs. 17 to 22 percent who are Catholic and 5 percent who follow a different religious tradition.
There’s probably no need to remind Democrats that older, church-going Americans tend to be among those most likely to vote in an off-year election. Otherwise, 90 percent of Republican conservatives are white, more than half are male and about 40 percent live in the South. Gallup based its findings on telephone interviews with more than 262,000 adults conducted Jan. 2 to Sept. 23. That gives the results an error margin of less than 1 percent.
“Bush-Gore presidential election split the country down the middle and had to be settled by the Supreme Court.” No, the Supreme Court took the election out of the hands of the people and the political branches of the government. The Constitution has a provision for handling elections that are essentially tied, but the radical conservatives on the Court wouldn’t allow that to operate because it would have given the election to Gore, so they cooked up a scheme whereby they would decide the outcome.
Republicans create caucus ‘to listen’ to Tea Party
There are scores of U.S. congressional caucuses that focus on specific issues — including ones to combat hunger and cancer, advance the arts, protect the environment and promote the rights of black, Asian, Hispanic and other Americans.
The conservative Tea Party movement scored a milestone on Wednesday in its drive to be heard in Washington when two dozen Republican members of the House of Representatives held the first meeting of the new Tea Party Congressional Caucus.
“We decided to form a Tea Party Caucus for one very important purpose, to listen to the concerns of the Tea Party,” Representative Michele Bachmann, chief organizer, told a Capitol Hill news conference afterward.
“We are not the mouthpiece of the Tea Party. We are not taking over the Tea Party,” Bachmann said. “We are to listen.”
Like many Tea Party-related events, this one drew more members of the news media than participants.
Republican lawmakers were joined, however, by several private citizens who spoke up for the Tea Party movement and its push for less government, more freedom and no new taxes.
They also rejected criticism of the Tea Party. “I’m here because I want to tell America we are not terrorists, we are not racists,” said Danielle Hollars, a black Army veteran and mother of five. “We are Americans who care about our country and the future of our children and our grandchildren.”
In case anyone’s still thinking that the teabaggers are “independent” middle of the road types who disdain both the right and the left equally,this new Quinnipiac Poll should finally put that to rest.
Looking at voters who consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement:
•74 percent are Republicans or independent voters leaning Republican;
•16 percent are Democrats or independent voters leaning Democratic;
•Only 5 percent are solidly independent;
•45 percent are men;
•55 percent are women;
•88 percent are white;
•77 percent voted for Sen. John McCain in 2008;
•15 percent voted for President Barack Obama.
A total of 19 percent of American voters trust government to do the right thing “almost all of the time” or “most of the time,” compared to only 4 percent of Tea Party members.
While only 33 percent of all voters have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin, 72 percent of Tea Party members have a favorable opinion of her.
But it really doesn’t take a poll to see that these tea partiers are ill-informed, Beck watching right wingers. All you have to do is read their signs and listen to what they say. They are the hardcore GOP base. And they are very, very sore losers. It’s one of their most defining characteristics.
Mixing it up: Race, Tea Party, NAACP, Palin
The NAACP’s resolution calling on leaders of the Tea Party movement to repudiate “racist elements” within its ranks has set off a political firestorm. The civil rights group illustrated its accusations with photographs taken at rallies that show supporters carrying controversial signs criticizing President Barack Obama.
Sarah Palin, a star of the Tea Party movement, responded with a missive on Facebook saying she was saddened by the NAACP’s charge of racism and accused the group of using “the divisive language of the past.”
Critics of the conservative Tea Party movement have questioned whether it is a racist movement, citing the largely white turnout at rallies and some of the signs carried by supporters. Conservatives say the liberals are using a low blow to counter genuine criticism of Obama’s policies.
David Frum’s FrumForum, which is dedicated to the renewal of the Republican Party and conservative movement, points out a piece on Patheos posted last week that discusses the question “Is the Tea Party Racist?” and offers one conclusion that liberals “were always going to believe that a movement dominated by white conservatives is racist.”
Clarence Page, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, says “nobody is truly accountable for the national movement” which has advantages and disadvantages. He says the feeling of dislike is mutual between the NAACP and tea partiers. “In the universe of political activism, the two groups are ‘Alien vs. Predator,’ a battle of titans from worlds too far apart for them to see much of anything the same way.”
The heated discussion over the Tea Party’s character less than four months before the November elections does suggest the movement has gained ground in the political spectrum, but it won’t be absolutely clear whether it is a force to be reckoned with until the ballots are counted.
Stay tuned…
There is no evidence of racism in the tea party anywhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRJ2UmyHh xI
Palin seeks to harness power of “Mama Grizzlies”
Sarah Palin is out with a new video today and she clearly is attempting to position herself as the leader of Republican conservative women.
She’s had some success this campaign season, promoting Republican women candidates such as South Carolina’s Nikki Haley and California’s Carly Fiorina who have gone on to win primary votes.
And how she is declaring women conservatives as part of a den of “Mama Grizzlies” eager to stampede Washington in Nov. 2 congressional elections and take on President Obama and his Democrats.
“These policies coming out of DC right now, this fundamental transformation of America — there are a lot of women who are very concerned about their kids’ future who are saying we don’t like this fundamental transformation and we’re going to do something about it,” she says in the video.
“Pit bulls were tough but you don’t want to mess with the Mama Grizzlies,” says the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee.
We’re told the video, paid for by Palin’s Sarahpac political arm, was produced by a single videographer and the images were not staged but rather were from Palin’s appearances at Tea Party and other events.
I am an angry Mom because I have to agree with thousands of other women who do not like the way our country is headed. I am thinking a lot of men are afraid of Sarah Palin that is why most have nothing kind to say about her!!! Go get um Sarah.
Tea Party Express names its election-year ‘heroes,’ ‘targets’
U.S. Representative Joe Wilson — the South Carolina Republican who last year screamed at President Barack Obama, “You lie!” — is on its list of “heroes.”
So is Republican Senator Jim DeMint, also of South Carolina, who’s leading a charge to repeal Obama’s landmark overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.
The Tea Party Express, one of the most prominent groups in the conservative Tea Party movement, on Thursday wrapped up a 20-day nationwide tour with an event in Washington, D.C., where it formally announced its 14 “heroes” as well as 13 “targets.”
Amid homemade signs reading, “Hope doesn’t create jobs,” and “Congress, you’re fired!” — Tea Party activists vowed to help their “heroes” win in the November election and to work to defeat their “targets.”
The Tea Party Express is dedicated to opposing what it sees as the Democrats’ liberal tax-and-spend policies and to ridding the Republican Party of those it does not consider to be conservative enough.
A Tea Party Express spokesman, asked how Joe Wilson made the list of heroes, cited the congressman’s conservative voting record and made no mention of his yelling at Obama at a nationally televised address on healthcare last year.
While the Tea Party Express has made life difficult for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, all but one of its “heroes” — conservative, first-term Democratic Representative Walt Minnick of Idaho — is a Republican. And all of its “targets,” including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, are Democrat.
Hey, my Congressman does his job for me pretty well. It’s all you other schnooks electing Congressmen who don’t share our values that turn it into a laughingstock.
i.e. it’s always the other guys’ fault.
==Bob
