Why are these politicians smiling?
Social Security reform is coming. You can tell by the smiling nice guy personas being adopted around Washington in uncommon bipartisan fashion.
There’s Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “If we’re smart, we can adjust those programs in ways that minimize the impact,” he reassures the viewers of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
After all, Sessions says there’s no reason seniors should have to worry about losing their Social Security (who says they would?) or see it “savaged in any significant way.”
Never mind the bizarre implication that it might somehow be savaged in an insignificant way.
These are not fighting words like the ones that adorned political speech before the Giffords shooting in Arizona.
That’s because politicians who talk tough about Social Security can wind up sleeping with the fishes, electorally speaking, and because political sharpies are getting the idea that the public is just about scared enough by the deficit to accept some change to the financially ailing government pension program.
People inside the big white mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue also want to avoid violent metaphors like any permutation of the verb to slash.
CPAC victory in hand, Ron Paul takes on Tea Party
Libertarian Ron Paul, a godfather of the Tea Party movement, isn’t altogether happy with his political progeny these days.
Fresh from victory in last week’s CPAC presidential straw poll, the Republican congressman from Texas laments to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that some Tea Partiers aren’t measuring up when it comes to the tough defense and entitlement program cuts he believes are needed to save the United States from economic cataclysm.
“They don’t want you to touch Social Security. They don’t want you to touch anything but Obamacare,” Paul says. “Some of them are real Republicans and they wouldn’t dare touch Bush’s increase in medical care costs, you know, prescription health programs.”
“They treat the symptoms and they don’t look at it philosophically,” he adds.
This sounds like a new fissure in the divisions emerging among Republicans. The Tea Party movement swept Republicans into the majority in the House of Representatives last November, while narrowing the Democratic Party’s hold on the Senate.
This year, newly elected Republicans with Tea Party backing have embarrassed the party leadership in the House on high-profile votes and pushed to expand initial 2011 spending cuts of $40 billion to more than$60 billion.
Differences between Republicans have appeared to turn on degrees of conservatism and aggressiveness about spending cuts, with some balking at the prospect of reducing popular programs that could cost votes.
Fox News has been busted yet again editing video to misinform its viewers.
“Fox News. We distort, you buy it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwo0Iyrh1 Zk
Is Rand Paul a U.S. Senate action hero?
It didn’t take Rand Paul long to become Captain America of the U.S. Senate. He’s tough-minded, strong-willed and he’s ready to battle the most dangerous titans on the political landscape, like Social Security and Medicare.
In fact, the Republican Tea Party favorite from Kentucky tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that a courageous and comprehensive plan for fixing America’s public finances will soon be on the march. And if all goes as planned, much may be accomplished before the start of this year’s Major League Baseball season.
“Within two to three weeks, I’m going to propose a fix for Social Security,” says Rand, son of Ron, who has already far surpassed the fiscal aims of the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill by proposing $500 billion in budget cuts.
“We’re going to fix the budget the first week. The second month, I’m going to fix Social Security and then the third month, we’re going to work on Medicare,” he adds, with tongue somewhat in cheek.
At the moment, his blueprint for Medicare still amounts to “a secret plan.” But on Social Security, we can expect what other Republicans are avoiding: an increase in the retirement age and means testing for wealthier beneficiaries.
Paul says the difference between him and other Republicans is that he’s “unafraid” of voter reaction: “If you talk frankly and speak boldly, you’ll get more people to vote for you.”
Another important difference is that his brave ambitious plans are unlikely to succeed at a time when congressional leaders seem increasingly unwilling to consider large-scale reductions. Look at it this way: the GOP’s bold campaign pledge to cut 2011 spending by $100 billion shrank first to about $50 billion and now to $32 billion.
Comedy that’s a good analogy, the whole political system in america is rife with comedians. Yet perhaps we need more goofballs like Rand Paul and his father. The last time the economy and the country was in this type of shape. Huge corporations extremely wealthy individuals no middle class. Teddy roosevelt became president. He was most definitely a waco and a goofball but he got the job done. So for me bring on the mental cases, what the hey that can’t do any worse then the rational sane politicians that america has….
Washington Extra – Time for a change, Take two
For the second time in two years, the American people have delivered a message of change, a message that they think Washington is broken. In 2008, Barack Obama took that message into the White House but has, at least according to these polls, failed to deliver change that most Americans readily believe in.
Now, the conservative Tea Party movement is riding what Kentucky’s new Senator-elect Rand Paul called a “tidal wave” right into the halls of power to “get our government back.”
The change the Tea Party is proposing is, of course, very different from the agenda that Obama pursued. The question is whether the new kids on the block will be any more successful in handling the power they have now been granted.
Paul said the message he would take to Washington from day one was a message of “fiscal sanity, constitutionally limited government and balanced budgets.” That will be music to many voters’ ears, especially to people who felt that Obama had dangerously expanded the role of the government and presided over an alarming rise in spending and borrowing without curing the nation’s economic ills.
But the other message many Americans would like politicians to hear is for an end to the partisan bickering that has disfigured political debate and divided the country — that political, as well as fiscal, sanity would be restored. There was not much sign on Tuesday night that they would get it.
John Boehner, the likely Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, said it now was up to Obama to “change course.” Obama later called Boehner to say he was looking forward to finding “common ground,” but not everyone is convinced it is there to be found.
“The big problem we have in Washington right now is the Democrats are so tied into union bosses and some special interests, they cannot move back to the center,” Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican senator and Tea Party champion, told CNN.”They can’t work with us. I mean, we can’t work together on ideas of how to cut the budget, how to cut spending.”
When politics feels like a bad flight
He sounded like someone bombarded by too many election ads.
“I call it the perfect storm of bad manners,” Steven Slater told CNN’s Larry King. “I was angry at all of it.”
The former JetBlue flight attendant, who famously quit his job by jumping down an emergency chute, beer in hand, was talking about his life in the U.S. airline industry — not politics.
But his words could just as easily have described what some people think about the tone of the 2010 midterm election campaign – like audience members who booed Republican California gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman for refusing to stop TV ads attacking her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown. This election year, negative ads can be mild compared with campaign events on the ground. Last week, Alaska Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller’s private security guard handcuffed a journalist for asking questions the candidate didn’t want to answer. This week, video footage from Kentucky shows a woman protester from MoveOn.org being dragged to the ground and stepped on by supporters of Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul. Among voters, the anger appears aimed mainly at Democrats, who the Cook Political Report’s pre-election House outlook now predicts will lose 48 to 60 seats, with higher losses possible. Republican officials are already preparing for an invasion of fresh new GOP House members, some of them Tea Party candidates who say they want nothing to do with business as usual in Washington.
How are party officials preparing? So far, they’ve assembled a list of experienced insiders and lobbyists to help fill top positions on the staffs of those newly elected GOP lawmakers.
Yes, insiders will still be running the show. And nobody’s booed, at least not yet.
Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Republican Rand Paul leading in Kentucky Senate race
Republican Rand Paul, a Tea Party favored candidate, is leading his Democratic opponent Jack Conway by 5 points among likely voters, 45 percent to 40 percent, in the Kentucky race for a U.S. Senate seat, a Reuters/Ipsos poll said.
Many voters in Kentucky, 53 percent, were unaware of the recent reports about Paul’s involvement in apparent pranks while he was a student. A GQ headlined “Rand Paul’s Kooky College Days” article described escapades including trying to force a woman to bow at a creek to a god called “Aqua Buddha” and smoke marijuana.
A small number of Republicans, 12 percent, said those stories made them MORE likely to vote for the son of two-time Republican presidential contender Ron Paul.
Of those who had heard about the alleged incidents at Baylor University, 57 percent believe they were exaggerated or fabricated and 28 percent think there is some truth to them. Those views didn’t follow straight party lines, with 40 percent of Democrats saying the incidents were exaggerated and 14 percent of Republicans saying they were true.
President Barack Obama’s ratings were negative in Kentucky, with 55 percent disapproving of the way he is handling his job compared with 44 percent approving.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell fared better than Obama, with 50 percent approving of the way he is doing his job as senator and minority leader.
Photo credit: Reuters/Jake Stevens (Paul giving victory speech after Republican primary in May)
As a proud Kentuckian, I believe we’re going to be better off with more conservative “crackpots” and fewer progressive crack-heads like Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama et al. United We Stand, Divided We Fall.
Rand Paul blames trash-talking Democrats who throw out red herrings
“When does my honeymoon period start?” Rand Paul asked.
That was Paul’s opening line in an ABC “Good Morning America” interview Friday when asked about the controversy this week over comments that suggested he opposed part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed racial segregation.
Paul blamed the controversy on political trash-talk by Democrats worried that he will win the Kentucky Senate seat in November’s election after his Tea Party supported victory in the Republican primary earlier this week.
“I’ve been trashed up and down one network that tends to side with the Democrats. For an entire 24 hours I’ve suffered from them saying ‘oh he wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act,’ but that’s never been my position,” he said.
“I am against repealing the Civil Rights Act, I’m against repealing the Fair Housing Act, I ‘ve never campaigned on that, it’s not part of our platform. And so what these are, are red herrings that people are trying to bring up because the Democrats are waaaaay behind in Kentucky and are going to have a tough time beating us down here,” Paul said.
“If you want to bring up 40-year-old legislation, why don’t you bring me on with Senator Byrd and we’ll talk about how he filibustered the Civil Rights Act?”
Rand Paul is just saying out loud what Republicans have believed for years. Paul’s sincere and principled belief is that government should not be able to impose any regulations on private businesses. This is news? No. It’s the central premise of the entire “government isn’t the solutuon to our problem, government is the problem” conservative dogma.
Conservatives hate the minimum wage. They hate affirmative action. They hate the Fair Pay Act. They hate cap and trade. They hate the SEC. They hate OSHA. They hate the EPA. They hate corporate taxes. They hate hate hate everything that inhibits businesses from doing whatever they want in pursuit of profits. It’s not the high-tax, big government 1950s they romanticize — it’s the 1920s, or even better, the 1890s.
That’s the part they leave out when they say, “We are taking our country back.” What they are REALLY saying is, “We are taking our country back–to the 1890′s.” But they usually don’t get quite so explicit about it. They know saying Wal-Mart should be able to pay its workers poverty wages won’t win elections, so they’ve gotten very good about reframing the concept with carefully crafted talking points like, “We’ve got to keep government out of the way so that businesses can create jobs.”
Make no mistake, Ayn Rand Paul is not being shunned by the GOP because they think his views are abhorrent-— he’s being embraced. They’re just a little nervous because he went off script and got way too analytical and specific. In short, he represented their beliefs too accurately and too honestly.
The Day After: everyone’s got an opinion
Everyone’s got an opinion about what happened Tuesday when Senator Arlen Specter — long-term Republican, newly turned Democrat — lost the Pennsylvania primary, Tea Party candidate Ron Paul won the Senate Republican primary in Kentucky, and neither Democrat in the Arkansas Senate primary could muster 50 percent of the vote so they have to do it all over again in June.
In all of the contests, there was only one person who won an actual seat in Congress on Tuesday night — Democrat Mark Critz who took the special election for the Pennsylvania district seat left vacant by the death of Rep. John Murtha earlier this year.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs @PressSec tweeted “Sort of says it all…” with a link to a Politico story headlined “The GOP’s special failure.”
Talking Points Memo wrote that National Republicans were the “big loser.”
Interesting take in a Washington Post blog by Jonathan Capehart who said the Democrat win in Pennsylvania’s special election might actually be a problem for President Barack Obama because Critz is pro-life, pro-guns, and against the new healthcare law.
And many are pointing to Paul’s win as a sign that the Tea Party movement cannot be ignored.
Our own political correspondent John Whitesides found that both parties saw glimmers of hope in Tuesday’s rubble for the November midterm elections — the ones that will really, really count.
Specter Loses, “Tea Party” Wins
It’s curtains for Arlen Specter’s career in the U.S. Senate. The veteran senator from Pennsylvania went down in defeat on Tuesday, losing to challenger Rep. Joe Sestak in a tight race for the Democratic Senate nomination.
Specter’s loss makes him the latest incumbent to get the boot from angry voters unhappy with just about everybody in Washington.
Specter has served in the Senate for 30 years but his political fortune may have been sealed last year when he switched party allegiance from Republican to Democrat.
During the campaign, Specter offered Pennsylvania voters his clout, experience and seniority — but it wasn’t enough to hold off Sestak, a two-term congressman who waged an aggressive campaign against Specter.
“It’s been a great privilege to serve the people of Pennsylvania, “ the senator said. His brief concession speech in Philadelphia was interrupted by a man in the audience who shouted: “Thank you, Arlen.”
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a jubilant Sestak claimed victory.
“This is what Democracy looks like – a win for the people over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington, DC, ” Sestak said to cheering supporters.
I for one, did not say “2 to 1 in favor of democrats”. I said, 2 to 1 democrat. I will write it slowly for you. 2 democrats to every 1 republican.
No matter what you want to say, it is no big surprise the democrat won.
You are not capable of discussing the issues, you are just a harasser who is an empty vessel.
Tea Party toughens up Republican Party – Gingrich
The Tea Party movement is a good thing for the Republican Party, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says. It toughens up the GOP.
(Anyone else thinking biker jackets?)
Rather than fragment the Republican Party in the coming November elections, the conservative anti-tax, small-government Tea Party movement will rev it up, says Gingrich, who helped orchestrate the 1994 Republican Revolution when the party won control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections.
And wins by Tea Party-supported candidates in the primaries leading up to the November midterms will benefit the Republican Party, “if the Tea Party movement and the Republicans stay together to defeat Obamaism,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show.
“The Tea Party movement adds energy, it adds drive, it adds a toughness that the Republican Party needs,” he said.
The Kentucky Republican primary for Senate today will be one test of how well a Tea Party supported candidate (Rand Paul) can fare against a party establishment supported candidate (Trey Grayson) at the ballot box.
Gingrich would not pick a candidate in the Kentucky primary, saying he had friends on both sides but had a hunch that Paul has the edge.
(Anyone else thinking biker jackets?) Yeah, I’ve been seeing the Diva of the wingers wearing a leather jacket with lots of zippers and xtian bling lately. Typically tacky. And indieinfla is right, the Tea Baggers are nothing but the successfully relabeled Dubyanauts that the GOP recognized as a lead weight around their ankles after eight long years of retrograde motion.
With the current and projected budgets, you’ll have to raise the age to 1 year after we die!