Washington Extra – T-Paw power
Right off the starting line, Republican Tim Pawlenty is fashioning himself as the Chevy of presidential candidates. “We will not be the money champion in the race to start with. My friend, Mitt Romney, will be the front-runner in that regard,” he told NBC’s Today show. His nomination bid, he added, “may not be the BMW or the Mercedes campaign.”
Sounds like T-Paw is calling Mitt a Mercedes. But what Pawlenty isn’t saying is that he is running the Cadillac of campaigns in Iowa. The former Minnesota governor has put more troops on the ground in that early voting state than any of the other candidates combined, according to the Iowa Republican website.
A political scientist in his native Minnesota called it a big and costly operation, “a Napoleonic army sort of thing.” With potent paychecks, Pawlenty has drawn in some of Iowa’s best campaign talent.
Yes, he may be putting all his eggs in one basket in Iowa, but he probably needs to. Romney is likely to do well in the other main early voting state New Hampshire, next door to his Massachusetts. And that means Pawlenty needs Iowa to stay in the race. If there was ever a time for T-Paw to spend lavishly, this is probably it.
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Republicans — still looking for a 2012 savior?
As Tea Party cranks up heat on Congress, poll shows public support waning
The Tea Party is coming to Washington to turn up the heat on the Congress — just as a new poll finds that public support for it has waned.
Members of the conservative Tea Party movement plan to hold a rally on Thursday outside the U.S. Capitol, urging Republicans to stand firm in their showdown with Democrats over proposed spending cuts.
While the Tea Party helped Republicans win power in last year’s elections, nearly half of all Americans now have an unfavorable view of it, according to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released on Wednesday.
The Tea Party’s 47 percent unfavorablity rating is up four points since December, and represents an increase of 21 points since January 2010, the poll said.
That drops the Tea Party into the same disapproval range as the Democratic and Republican parties, whose unfavorable ratings are each 48 percent. The Tea Party’s favorable rating of 32 percent is down five points since December.
“This is the first time that a CNN poll has shown the Tea Party’s unfavorable ratings as high as those of the two major parties,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor, said voters have lost patience with Washington’s inability to reinvigorate the weak U.S. economy.
Please tell me how we grew to be the greatest most prosperous and most giving nation on earth BEFORE welfare and BEFORE social security and BEFORE WIC programs, and BEFORE all the other government subsistence programs? If I make a man dependent on me, is that a good thing; is it either stated or implied in the US Constitution?
No politics or punditry for George W. Bush
When George W. Bush says he’s done with politics — believe it.
Not even the queen of daytime TV could draw the former Republican president into commenting on the current political scene when Bush sat down with her to discuss his new book.
He makes it clear he has moved on from politics and that punditry is not his thing.
“I’m through with politics. It’s hard for people to believe. I already said that. I am through. I enjoyed it,” Bush says in excerpts of an upcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey released Thursday.
Winfrey asks if that’s why he’s made no public comment on President Barack Obama’s job performance.
“No. Because I want to treat my successor the way I’d like to have been treated. I don’t think it’s good for a former president to be out there opining on every darned issue. He’s got a plenty tough job. Trust me. And there’s gonna be plenty of critics and he doesn’t need me criticizing him. And I don’t think it’s good for the presidency. Other people have a different point of view,” Bush explains.
The sneak peek of Bush’s sit-down with Winfrey came two days after his Republican Party gave Obama a “shellacking” in Tuesday’s midterm elections, seizing control of the House and picking up a half-dozen seats in the Senate.
Has the decision maker reached the Winfrey’s level now? Is larry King no longer interested in him. Bill Clinton is still asked by John Stewart!
Rex Minor
Top Democrat dismisses Beck’s ‘non-political’ rally as blatant politics
A Washington rally that will be hosted by Fox TV’s Glenn Beck and feature conservative power broker Sarah Palin drew the wrath on Friday of the chairman of the House Democratic campaign committee.
Chris Van Hollen rejected organizers’ assurances that the “Restoring Honor Rally” — expected to draw thousands of members of the conservative Tea Party movement — would be “non-political.”
In fact, Van Hollen predicted the rally would be partisan and could turn off many voters.
The event, to be held on Saturday on the National Mall — between the U.S. Capitol and Lincoln Memorial — is billed as an opportunity to “celebrate America by honoring our heroes, our heritage, our future.”
But with Beck and Palin on stage before a crush of enthusiastic followers, the rally seems ripe for partisan bashing.
“Let’s call it what it is. It’s a blatant political effort,” Van Hollen told reporters at the National Press Club where he also said his party would prove many analysts wrong and retain control of the House in the Nov. 2 election.
“You’ve seen Glenn Beck and a lot of the talk show hosts on Fox News out there talking about this election for the last 15 months,” Van Hollen said.
“Have they started us on the path towards another civil war?”
Hopefully any Civil War will be internal to the conservatives. Hard to imagine Mormons (like Beck), Catholics, Baptists, and whatall cooperating for long without a common enemy to distract them from their critical and unresolvable points of disagreement with one another.
Peter Peterson says Republicans and business need to step up
Peter Peterson knows a little something about Republicans, Wall Street, and American business. He’s a former Commerce Secretary under Republican President Richard Nixon, a former New York Federal Reserve chairman and a former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers.
And what he sees right now is that Republicans and business are not stepping up to the plate.
“One of the things that troubles me about the position of the Republicans is they’ve also been the party of ‘yes,’ not just the party of ’no’,” he said in an interview with Reuters Insider TV.
Peterson gave as an example a rise in discretionary spending and the enactment of the Medicare prescription drug bill “without paying for it” during the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush.
“So one of my big concerns about the Republican Party – it’s one thing to state a principle called fiscal conservatism, and it’s another thing to come up with a program to do something about it. And like the Democrats, they have been very lacking in coming up with such a plan,” Peterson said quite bluntly.
American business groups criticize Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration for not being very receptive to their needs, but Peterson turned that around and said it was business groups who needed to step up to the plate.
“I’ve been a businessman virtually my entire life, and I would like to suggest some things that business might do that’s somewhat different than what they’re now doing,” Peterson said.
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.
Obama: no ‘Armageddon’ as healthcare becomes law
President Barack Obama, campaigning in Iowa on Thursday to sell his landmark healthcare overhaul, couldn’t resist mocking Republicans for warning that the reform would provoke “Armageddon” and other tactics he rejects as alarmist scaremongering.
“I’m not exaggerating. Leaders of the Republican Party called the passage of this bill Armageddon. Armageddon! End of freedom as we know it,” he told a rally in Iowa City.
“So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there were any asteroids falling, some cracks opening up in the earth? Turned out it was a nice day. Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the Mall,” he said.
Opponents of the bill warn it will unleash another federal entitlement program that the American economy cannot afford that will inevitably lead to higher taxes and bigger deficits.
Obama denies this complaint and said that the American people would be able to make their own minds up as they compared their own experience with the claims of his opponents.
“From this day forward, all the cynics, all the naysayers, they are going to have to confront the reality of what this reform is and what it isn’t. They will have to finally acknowledge this isn’t a government takeover of our healthcare system,” he said.
Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama in Iowa), Reuters/Jim Young (cherry blossoms in Washington)
I love my country. I respect the Presidency. I pray for our President and his family. But at this point in time, I must say, we have YET to experience such a arrogant, prideful man in that office. He knows no bounds, apparently. Imagine…an American president who actually taunts 55+ % of the American citizens. Scary. The gloves are coming off, Mr. Obama. You are certainly revealing your stripes, aren’t you?
Texas Tea Partiers organize by zip codes
In north Texas, the conservative protest Tea Party movement has organized itself by zip codes and hopes it is a model that will be used elsewhere in America as it sets out to “take the country back” neighborhood by neighborhood.
“We break down our system by zip codes. This is unique to north Texas I think but we would like to see it adopted elsewhere,” Ken Emanuelson, who is on the steering committee for the Dallas Tea Party, told me on the sidelines of a “Leadership Tea Party” conference being held this weekend.
The movement grabbed headlines last year as it channeled conservative opposition to President Barack Obama’s policies into natwion-wide protests against bank bail-outs, the drive to overhaul healthcare, and other aspects of the White House agenda.
Liberal critics claimed it was all orchestrated from the top down; conservative commentators for the most part claimed it was an expression of spontaneous anger by patriotic citizens evoking a famous episode of colonial revolt against British rule.
Regardless, organizing at such a local level — zip codes are a system of postal codes used by the U.S. Postal Service — suggests at least one part of the movement is becoming more focused and targeted in its political activism and is shedding any pretence of spontaneity.
Just holding a conference likes this for scores of dedicated activists from across the country suggests the movement is transforming itself into a more typical sort of political machine aimed ultimately at getting out the vote for conservative — and almost always Republican — candidates. One of the sessions slated for Saturday afternoon is “Victory in a Box” which is about getting out the vote.
Yeah baby! Check out our zip code web site http://www.75230csc.com
It’s our country and we have to take it back.
A Tale of Two Tea Parties
Is it the best of times or the worst of times for America’s Tea Party movement?
The answer may emerge in the next couple of weeks. A pair of Tea-Party-events-in-the-making suggest the movement, which has channeled much of the conservative opposition to President Barack Obama’s agenda, has reached a fork in the road.
It made headlines last summer as “Tea Party” rallies – evoking a famous protest in Boston against British rule in 1773 — were held across the country in opposition to bank bail-outs, Obama’s attempted healthcare overhaul, and other aspects of the White House agenda.
This weekend one offshoot of the movement is holding a conference in Dallas/Fort Worth called “Leadership Tea Party.” It is a low-key, nuts-and-bolts affair that is focused on the practical side of political training and winning elections. Sessions include: “Tea Parties: Legal Overview for Structures and Fundraising,” and “Victory in a Box.” The latter is about how to get out the vote in primary and general elections.
Richard Viguerie, a leading conservative figure and writer, will give the keynote address on Friday night. Among other things he is seen as a pioneer of get-0ut-the-vote tactics such as ”political direct mail.” The conference is being put on by a group called the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition.
This all suggests the movement — or part of it anyway — which last summer portrayed itself as grassroots and spontaneous, is following a path that has been well-trodden by other conservative groups in America linked to the Republican Party, such as the religious right. Effectively, it is organizing to push conservative candidates and issues with an eye to the 2010 congressional elections and the next White House race in 2012.
Palin said, “will give her speaking fee — widely reported to be around $100,000 — back to conservative political causes”. Interesting, as she no doubt counts herself as a conservative political cause. 
Republican northern light sparks up Southern town
Sarah Palin remains the hottest Republican ticket if the crowds and enthusiasm at her book signings are anything to go by.
On Friday she brought her “Going Rogue” book tour to Plano, an affluent town just north of Dallas that is in deeply red Republican country. About 1,500 people lined up for hours in the winter cold to wait for Palin’s bus. A lucky 1,000 among them had advance tickets to get their copy of her new autobiography signed.
The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee clearly remains the northern light of the Republican Party that can spark up its Southern and conservative base. She now reigns almost unchallenged with this base after the apparent downfall of former Arkansas governor and Republican White House hopeful Mike Huckabee.
His political future was dealt a blow this week by the revelation that he had once pardoned the man who killed four police officers in Washington state on Sunday.
“I hope she makes a run for president, I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for her,” said Steve Yurasits, a 59-year-old school bus driver, expressing a sentiment shared by many in the crowd.
The whole event had a campaign kind of feel to it — the music, the bus, the crowd, the waving of Palin banners. And the book has reportedly sold 1 million copies already.
Sounds like the magazines people subscribe to are a stroke of genius on the part of the magazine marketers. They still aren’t free because the magazines buy the books and use them as a way to “increase” new subscribers. It’s a win win for everyone. Palin and the publisher get millions and the magazines get a huge increase in subscribers. And all because Sarah Palin has a blockbuster bestseller people want to read and to know more about her. BTW, polls show Palin and Obama are virtually tied in approval (within one point). Yeah, try to spin that one.
If this wasn’t true, then the magazines wouldn’t offer it to new subscribers.
So, your point is really not relevant and is just sour grapes at someone who is successful. Her book is a huge bestseller and everyone wants in on the action.
BTW, at our local Costco, I remember Hillary Clinton’s book sitting there with no one interested in it. However, Sarah Palin’s book is hard to keep on the table as shoppers put copies in their carts.
The progressive authors aren’t anywhere to be seen on any bestseller list. Guess no one wants to lose money, so they aren’t added as an incentive to purchase magazines. Ask Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and even Barak Obama how many copies they sold. You can probably add them all together and still not equal Palin’s book sales in one week alone.
So Pawlenty went from being a Buick to a Chevy in front of the crowd of a dozen onlookers. He was against the GM bail out so one would think that he was a Corolla or a VW bug.
The Republicans may be looking for a savior but Arnold the Inseminator is not available as he is busy in a divorce settlement and couldn’t take the time to arrange for the birthers to forge a birth certificate for him saying that he was born in Kansas.