Stephen Colbert, Herman Cain team up at South Carolina rally
Stephen Colbert, who last week announced that he would explore a “possible candidacy for the president of the United States of South Carolina,” is joining forces with former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain at a rally — dubbed the “Rock Me Like a Herman Cain: South Cain-olina Primary Rally” – in Charleston today.
Colbert is not on the ballot in South Carolina because he missed the filing deadline by several months, but Cain, who suspended his bid for the White House on December 3, still is, and Colbert is asking supporters to vote for Cain in his stead. South Carolina permits Democrats and Independents to vote in the state’s Republican primary.
“Herman Cain is my main man,” Colbert said in an appearance on Morning Joe this morning. “He’s my main man with a tax plan so fine, they called it 9-9-9. The Mad Max of the flat tax. Herman Cain has qualities that I admire — he’s a family man, he’s pro business, and he has something I don’t think I’ll ever have: a place on the South Carolina ballot.”
Watch highlights from the rally, via ReutersTV:
Sarah Palin: I’d vote for Gingrich “to keep things going”
Sarah Palin gave a qualifying endorsement of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, a week after her husband also endorsed him.
In an interview with Fox television host Sean Hannity on Tuesday, Palin said that if she were a South Carolina voter she would cast her ballot for the former Speaker of the House in Saturday’s primary.
“If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep things going, I’d vote for Newt,” she said. Using a quote from the bible she said she wanted the race to continue because, “iron sharpens iron, steel sharpens steel.”
Rivals have been unable to dent Mitt Romney’s status as the frontrunner of the Republican race for the party nomination. Gingrich is one of several candidates who have risen up as a more conservative alternative, and challenger, to Romney.
While not a ringing endorsement, this is the closest Palin has gotten to formally siding with any candidate. Palin, a popular Tea Party conservative, started her own political action committee and toured the country giving speeches and raising money before announcing in October that she would not run for the nomination.
Her PAC website includes a list of “Palin Picks,” but no presidential candidates are listed.
Maybe a Christmas card from a “President Gingrich” could feature Newt with his 3 wives. How would that sit with Ms. Palin?
A Palin goes for Gingrich
Newt Gingrich may have been hoping for a Palin endorsement, but the one he announced Monday was probably not the one he was expecting.
The aspiring Republican presidential nominee said he received a call from former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s husband saying he would endorse him for president.
“Honored to be endorsed by Todd Palin.” Gingrich tweeted, though he did not mention anything about the more powerful Palin and if she had chosen whom to support in the 2012 campaign.
Gingrich’s campaign released a short press release later in the day quoting Todd Palin — a former snow machine champion who was introduced throughout the 2008 campaign by his wife as the “First Dude” of Alaska — calling Gingrich a “true leader.”
Palin even drew comparisons of the 68-year-old former speaker of the House with his 47-year-old wife who was the first Republican woman to run for vice president.
“Just like Sarah, Newt has faced many successes and challenges,” Palin said in the statement released by Gingrich’s campaign. “Despite his consultants leaving him last summer, Newt is still standing because of his ideas and his success in the debates — not by spending millions of dollars in campaign ads.”
Just like his Grifter wife, Todd Palin doesn’t actually care about Gingrich or the GOP nomination. He only cares about how he can USE the issue for his own benefit. Todd has recently tried to get the Discovery channel to produce another BOGUS “reality” show, this time about Todd’s participation in the Iron Dog snowmobile race. Discovery turned him down flat. Fox “news” is likely to not renew Sarah’s contract, primarily because of the incredibly shoddy way she handled her Presidential run prospects. Sarah has been like a stripper teasing the audience , and for the same reasons. She wants to fleece as much money as possible off the rubes who blindly follow her. The legacy of the Tea Party and it’s poster girl Palin, and the Right Wing extremists like Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers is the total destruction of the GOP’s leadership
Colbert’s not giving up on S.C. primary
Comedian Stephen Colbert has not given up on the primary in South Carolina.
The cable television talk show host tried and failed to get on the ballot to run in his home state’s primary back in 2008. This year, he has been offering to buy naming rights for the Jan. 21 primary, first by negotiating with the South Carolina Republican Party, then the state Democrats, and now by offering to have his Super PAC cover a $500,000 shortfall that South Carolina counties face in paying for the vote.
“The counties need the money, and Colbert Super PAC wants to give it to you; call it a Christmas Miracle. I’ve already filled out the check, and to prove it’s no joke, I’ve written ‘No Joke’ in the memo line. I’m going to be home in South Carolina over the holidays, so just give me a call. Both state parties have my contact info,” he wrote in an editorial in South Carolina’s “The State” newspaper on Thursday.
“Let’s put this late unpleasantness behind us and, in 2012, hold the greatest primary of all time.”
After learning that the South Carolina Republicans and local officials were squabbling over who would pay for the Jan. 21 primary, Colbert said he had reached an agreement with the state Republican party earlier this year in which his Super PAC would pay up to $400,000 directly to South Carolina and its counties to defray the cost of the election. In return, the primary’s official name would be “The Colbert Super PAC South Carolina Republican Primary.”
“We hammered out the contract over barbecue,” Colbert wrote.
No jump start for Perry campaign in New Hampshire
The wheels on Rick Perry’s bus will go round and round Iowa, where he’ll make 49 stops between now and the Jan. 3 Republican presidential caucus, his campaign announced last night.
Missing from his schedule are any stops in New Hampshire or South Carolina — the two states Perry visited in August to announce his run — which will vote on Jan. 10 and Jan. 21, respectively.
The one-time Republican frontrunner had invested substantial time in both states, making 25 campaign appearances in 11 days in New Hampshire and 21 stops over nine days in South Carolina since announcing his bid, according to data compiled by the Washington Post.
Perry is polling in third place in South Carolina, but might not make it to the Palmetto State’s primary if he doesn’t poll in the top three in Iowa. His recent focus on divisive issues like gay rights and school prayer are unlikely to help him gain ground among New Hampshire’s mainly moderate Republicans, and his campaign is all but finished in New Hampshire anyway, given that he hasn’t polled above 4 percent in the state in two months.
“When you’re slumping that badly you’ve got to pick and choose where you’re going to campaign,” says Dante Scala, a political scientist the University of New Hampshire. “He’s basically trying to jump-start his campaign, but in New Hampshire there’s no place to attach a jumper-cable to.”
Rick who? Does anyone even care about this moron anymore?
2012 candidates woo voters on Labor Day
Labor Day is no day off for President Barack Obama and the Republicans who want his job. The holiday to pay tribute to American workers traditionally marks the start of the general election campaign. And although 15 months remain before the 2012 election, you’ll find the 2012 White House hopefuls on the road Monday hoping to score points with voters.
Democrat Obama travels to Detroit on Labor Day to talk about how to create jobs and strengthen the economy, the White House said. With U.S. unemployment steady at 9.1 percent, Reuters’ Jeff Mason writes Obama’s on the spot to boost hiring and economic growth as he campaigns for a second term in the White House.
Obama also spoke in Detroit on Labor Day 2008 as his general election race heated up against Republican presidential rival Senator John McCain.
McCain’s vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, is not a declared candidate, but the whole world is waiting to find out whether she’ll join the the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
The former Alaska governor is the headliner at a Tea Party Express rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on Monday. Will she use her Labor Day speech to end the suspense over her intentions? Palin has indicated she’ll make a decision sometime this month. ABC News analyst Rick Klein poses the question: when Palin’s decision finally comes will she still be relevant?
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was greeted by a small group of Tea Party protesters at a pre-Labor day rally Sunday in Concord, New Hampshire. There was a bit of an intraparty battle over whether Romney should be invited to speak at all. Some Tea party activists who do not want him to win the Republican presidential nomination have launched an “anyone-but-Romney campaign,” The Washington Post reports. That includes the protest in New Hampshire, home of the first-in-the-nation-primary election.
Republican front-runner Rick Perry, favored by many Tea Party supporters, is concentrating his Labor Day efforts in South Carolina, another early and important primary state. The Texas governor has a town hall meeting in the morning before joining fellow Republican contenders at Senator Jim DeMint’s Palmetto Freedom Forum.
Well, “Sensibility,” if you look at the decline of the middle class in America, it parallels the decline of unions. If you think that’s success, it is you who is on the wrong side of history.
Who’s afraid of Mitt and T-Paw…
It turns out that Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the scariest pair of presidential prospects in the GOP field today, judging from a new Democratic ad and remarks by some Democratic Party hierophants.
Priorities USA Action, a political group founded by two former aides to President Barack Obama, targets Romney as a flip-flopper in a South Carolina TV ad that wields Republican Paul Ryan’s Medicare reforms like a political cudgel.
The 30-second black-and-white spot begins with Newt Gingrich’s “Meet the Press” remarks opposing what he called radical right-wing social engineering on Medicare. The ad then recounts Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s defense of Ryan before turning finally to Romney: “Mitt Romney says he’s ‘on the same page’ as Paul Ryan … but with Mitt Romney, you have to wonder: which page is he on today?”
The New York Times says the ad will run this weekend while Romney visits South Carolina.
Pundits view the ad as evidence that Democrats have locked on Romney as the GOP frontrunner, at least for now.
Ed Rendell, a leading Democrat who served as Pennsylvania governor and DNC chairman, put it this way on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “What really is instructive here is that this group’s trying to knock out Mitt Romney in the primaries. We don’t want to face Mitt Romney. A Romney-Pawlenty ticket is the most credible general election ticket.”
A monster twosome, perhaps. But that doesn’t mean top Republicans aren’t still baying at the doorsteps of Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie in hopes that one or both will take the plunge.
Glad to see serious (though flawed) GOPers running. The more Palin, Trump and Newt just muddy the waters.
Karl Rove says families should be off limits in politics
Karl Rove thinks the families of public figures should be off limits from the nasty, maligning, ad hominem attacks of election politics.
On an NBC Today show appearance to promote his new book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight”, Rove was asked about reports that his adoptive father, Louis, was gay.
Some critics have gone so far as to speculate that a gay father might help explain his parents’ divorce, his mother’s suicide and even his opposition to gay marriage. But Rove wants to “set the record straight” in the book, which is due for release on Tuesday.
“This was a political attack on me, that in order to get to me, people had to say ugly things about my parents. I don’t know whether my father was, at the end of his life, gay or not. I just don’t. I don’t think so, but I don’t know,” he told NBC.
“My mother never said to us that their marriage fell apart because my father was gay. So, the journalists who say, ‘Well obviously he was gay and Karl had to know that and this is why she committed suicide,’ they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“Our view on political issues, on issues of public policy, can and should be divorced from our families. And our families shouldn’t be used as convenient targets to shoot at in order to get at people in politics,” Rove said.
Did he decide this before or after he pushed that poll accusing John McCain of fathering a black child out of wedlock? Did he guffaw when Rush Limbaugh said the Clintons didn’t need a family dog because they already had Chelsea?
Karl, you forfeited the right to compassion toward yourself a very, very long time ago.
Republican “You lie!” outburst becomes Democratic fundraising cry
Rarely, if ever, have so few words moved so many people to contribute so much money so quickly.
Within 15 hours of Republican Representative Joe Wilson yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama, Wilson’s Democratic foe in next year’s election received more than 10,000 donations totaling upward of $350,000, according to the House Democratic campaign committee.
“And the numbers are still rising,” a spokesman said.
Wilson’s Democratic challenger, Rob Miller, an ex-Marine turned small businessman, lost a bid last November to unseat the now five-term congressman from South Carolina, 54 percent to 46 percent.
But Miller has suddenly become increasingly hopeful that he can topple America’s best known presidential heckler in the November 2010 contest.
“Representative Wilson’s behavior tonight exemplifies everything that is wrong in Washington,” Miller said on Wednesday after Wilson’s outburst during Obama’s nationally broadcast address to Congress on healthcare reform.
“Instead of engaging in childish name-calling and disrespecting our Commander-in-Chief, Joe Wilson should be working towards a bipartisan solution that makes quality, affordable health care available to each and every South Carolinian,” Miller said.
Enforce term limits on the legislature. Make the terms reasonably short. Keep people from becoming career politicians and you might see more change for the better.
The differences between the parties is taken over by self interested politicians that have a vested interest in keeping term limits out of the legislature. Demand and enact term limits.
Also get rid of corporate citizenship. If corporations are no longer considered citizens, the interests of true citizens will be better served. Changing those two things will change the whole political game in favor of the citizen. Then the people will truly have a voice.
Inside the Tent: South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford feels pretty good about John McCain‘s chances in his state.
“If we gotta worry about South Carolina, go ahead and fold up the tent — the whole match is over,” he tells Inside the Tent contributor John Steward. “No worries in South Carolina, and if they come, we got real problems.”
Inside the Tent has more than 40 delegates and other attendees in Denver and St. Paul, equipped with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. Steward is not a Reuters employee and any opinions expressed are his own.
Click here for a full list of contributors at the Republican National Convention.
Click here for more Inside the Tent contributions.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 election coverage.
The 666 Plan is the better plan. Just maybe the 999 is too steep for the poor.
No its not the anti christ but 6% Sales tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, and death estate tax is a ” Slam Dunk”!
666 works for Independents!