Obama isn’t the only one who’s criticized Romney’s vulture capitalism.
House Speaker John Boehner set the conservative blogosphere afire yesterday, when Politico’s Jake Sherman reported that the House GOP leadership would seek to reimplement popular parts of health care reform should the Supreme Court strike the entire law down next month. The pushback—and immediate retraction from Boehner—illustrates once again that the far right has the GOP leadership on a very short leash.
According to the story, Boehner briefed his colleagues on a contingency plan to reinstate both the requirement that keeps young Americans on their health insurance plans until age 26, and the laws that forbid insurers from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. He believes that it’s “too politically risky” to rip those provisions from the law.
Boehner is quite right, but this sounds like fingernails on sheet metal to the Tea Party, which has spent the last two years fulminating about the socialistic, dictatorial, no-good, very-bad Obamacare. And the reaction from the hard right was swift.
Romney had to have known about Grenell’s reputation for sharp elbows and a sharp tongue. He of course knew that Grenell is openly gay. He should have known that social conservatives were going to go after him. As Ruth Marcus writes, “Given the predictable, disgusting backlash to Grenell’s hiring, how could the campaign have no plan to deal with it other than shove Grenell into the background — the closet? — until the furor died down?” The absence of independence and leadership from Romney made it impossible for Grenell to stay.
Given his principles, Grenell should never have taken the job in the first place. But once there, Romney should have defended not only the man but his right to pick him.
Given his principles, Grenell should never have taken the job in the first place. But once there, Romney should have defended not only the man but his right to pick him.
Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman slammed his party during an interview this weekend at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He compared his party’s demand for purity and discipline to the Chinese Communist party, BuzzFeed reports, saying that Ronald Reagan would “likely not” be able to win the GOP nomination today.
He said he regrets taking such a hard line against tax increases, criticizing pledges like the one from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist that almost all Republican politicians sign. On his party’s foreign policy, Huntsman said, “I don’t know what world these people are living in.
He said he regrets taking such a hard line against tax increases, criticizing pledges like the one from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist that almost all Republican politicians sign. On his party’s foreign policy, Huntsman said, “I don’t know what world these people are living in.
Jon Huntsman Slams GOP: Reagan Would ‘Likely Not’ Be Able To Win Today
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) this week may face tough questions from disgruntled rank-and-file GOP lawmakers upset with his $25,000 donation to a group dedicated to ousting incumbents in Congress.
When the House convenes on Monday, it will be the first time that members of the GOP conference will gather since Cantor’s contribution to the anti-incumbent Campaign for Primary Accountability (CPA) became public.
More than a half dozen Republican lawmakers, stunned by the news of Cantor’s donation, agreed to speak with The Hill on the condition of anonymity to vent their frustration without fear of retribution. The lawmakers interviewed included both younger and senior members of the GOP conference.
One veteran lawmaker, upset with the majority leader’s perceived aggression toward members of his own party, said House GOP members will now fear payback when they speak out or vote against leadership.
Lawmakers: Controversial Cantor donation may come up this week
Somebody pass the popcorn!
Many newer GOP members in Congress are reluctant, regardless of entreaties by their leadership, to begin acting more responsibly. This unwillingness may be a reflection of voters’ unhappiness back home. On cable television, radio talk shows, and conservative websites, the Republican base has become so self-absorbed that it is no longer in touch with the practical realities of governing. “Why haven’t you repealed ‘Obamacare’? ” they ask Republican members of Congress. The answer: “We don’t have the votes in the Senate to repeal it.” This, for some reason, is an unacceptable response. “Why haven’t you slashed spending and balanced the budget?” they ask. The answer: “It isn’t quite as simple as it sounds.” This reply just doesn’t cut it with the base.
The 2012 election features a lot of moving parts and competing dynamics. Some GOP strategists privately suspect that an anti-incumbent dynamic may be found more within Republican primaries than within Democratic ones, and perhaps more so than in general elections.
The 2012 election features a lot of moving parts and competing dynamics. Some GOP strategists privately suspect that an anti-incumbent dynamic may be found more within Republican primaries than within Democratic ones, and perhaps more so than in general elections.
Charlie Cook, “Run Scared: More House Republicans could lose in the primaries than in the general election.”
The Lost Party: The strangest primary season in memory reveals a GOP that’s tearing itself apart.
That Mitt Romney finds himself so imperiled by Rick Santorum—Rick Santorum!—is just the latest in a series of jaw-dropping developments in what has been the most volatile, unpredictable, and just plain wackadoodle Republican-nomination contest ever. Part of the explanation lies in Romney’s lameness as a candidate, in Santorum’s strength, and in the sudden efflorescence of social issues in what was supposed to be an all-economy-all-the-time affair. But even more important have been the seismic changes within the Republican Party. “Compared to 2008, all the candidates are way to the right of John McCain,” says longtime conservative activist Jeff Bell. “The fact that Romney is running with basically the same views as then but is seen as too moderate tells you that the base has moved rightward and doesn’t simply want a conservative candidate—it wants a very conservative one.”
The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi. And with those divisions have arisen the competing electoral coalitions…
Romney’s main line of attack, seen in the ads and recited in the debate, focuses on Santorum’s time in in the House and Senate: especially voting for earmarks and debt ceiling increases and supporting Arlen Specter’s reelection in 2004.
One way of describing these attacks is to say Romney is criticizing Santorum for being a nationally relevant, relatively powerful Republican during the Bush years. After all, you only get to vote for earmarks and to raising the debt ceiling if you’re winning elections and serving in Congress…
What Romney is doing is taking advantage of the fact that, as a moderate Republican governor in a blue state, he wasn’t called on to take substantive political hits for the party. A Romney endorsement for Specter, for example, would have done next to nothing for Specter’s reelection. And had Romney won Teddy Kennedy’s seat in 1994 and been reelected to a second term, he probably would have been right there with Santorum and the overwhelming majority of Republicans, voting for earmarks and debt ceiling increases, supporting No Child Left Behind, and maybe even endorsing a moderate senator in a tough primary battle.
So, in a contest against someone who can stand in for the faults of Bush-Era Republicanism, Romney’s greatest asset is that he couldn’t win a Senate election and was too moderate as governor to be part of a Republican governance failure.
![Ron Paul’s negative turn
Public sentiment regarding Texas Rep. Ron Paul has turned drastically negative in the first few days of 2012, according to an analysis of all of the Republican presidential candidates conducted by a GOP media firm [tracking mentions of the GOP candidates on all media channels]…
Monitoring mentions alone isn’t scientific nor conclusive about a candidate’s fate in the race. But it’s damn interesting.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzrqv5Y0UX1qztsh3o1_1280.png)
Public sentiment regarding Texas Rep. Ron Paul has turned drastically negative in the first few days of 2012, according to an analysis of all of the Republican presidential candidates conducted by a GOP media firm [tracking mentions of the GOP candidates on all media channels]…
Monitoring mentions alone isn’t scientific nor conclusive about a candidate’s fate in the race. But it’s damn interesting.
What the party needs is not simply a new candidate. It needs someone with the courage to stand up and say that the GOP has gone completely off the deep end… But it lacks such a person utterly. It’s a party made up of on the one hand unprincipled cowards, and on the other of people devoted to principles so extreme that they’d have serious trouble attracting more than about 42 percent of the vote…
[T]here is no savior. And let us please be clear on why there is no savior. Because there is no one who can satisfy the base of the GOP—a cohort so drunk on ideology and resentment that they cheer electrocutions and boo a soldier—and be elected president of the United States. Period. The standard journalistic trope the past few months has been to say that the Republican establishment would step in at some point and not let things get too out of hand. But that’s mostly nonsense. This GOP establishment is barely less loopy than the base. If the base is driving the party into a ditch, the establishment is riding shotgun holding a shovel.
And there’s not one politician in sight who has the nerve to say anything about it.
Michael Tomasky: There Will Be No Saviors for the GOP in 2012
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and his allies at the super PAC Restore Our Future are spending $1,240,230 in Michigan this week, according to a Republican media buyer. The former Pennsylvania senator is spending $42,443 — not a typo — and none of his super PAC supporters have spent anything.
That means there will be 29 times more Romney ads than Santorum ads on the air in the Wolverine state.
This has done nothing to dampen Santorum, who has a fifteen-point lead against Romney in Romney’s “home state.” In order to maintain that lead, it seems Santorum has reneged on his promise to refrain from going negative.
As a white, male, middle-aged conservative talk radio host from Virginia, John Fredericks is something close to the Platonic ideal of a Fox News fan.
And until last year, he was one. But then Fox’s treatment of the Republican primary race — the presentation of Karl Rove as a political analyst despite his having “thrown in for Romney” and Sean Hannity’s clear ties to the Republican establishment — began to grate on him. So he changed the channel…
Across the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, there were similar grumbles among conservative activists that the cable channel was no longer speaking for them as it once did.
The grumblers were picking up on a strategy that has been under way for some time — a “course correction,” as Fox chief Roger Ailes put it last fall — with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency. Lately, Fox has increasingly promoted its straight-news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and debates of the Republican primary season. Just last week, it hired the openly gay liberal activist Sally Kohn as a contributor.
All along, Fox watchers warned that it risked alienating conservative true believers as it inched toward the center.
Well, consider them alienated.
Fox News ‘course correction’ rankles some
This is exactly why my teabagger father has stopped watching Fox News. They’re “in the tank” for Romney, according to him. He’s also not a fan of Sarah Palin and has bought into the propaganda that Bush wasn’t really a conservative and that’s Karl Rove’s fault, somehow.
Page 1 of 18
