Category Archives: Republicans

N.H. paper says ‘Ron Paul is a dangerous man’

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This just in from The Slatest:

Things are going well for Ron Paul in Iowa, but the GOP hopeful may not get as warm of welcome in New Hampshire – at least if one of the state’s more influential newspapers gets its way.

The New Hampshire Union Leader ran on op-ed Thursday from its publisher trashing Paul for his “warped” views on national security and foreign policy and calling him the “favored candidate of the lunatic fringe,” which includes “white supremacists, anti-Semites, [and] truthers.”

“Ron Paul is a dangerous man,” the anti-endorsement begins. It ends: “His defenders say they admire Ron Paul’s ‘consistency.’ It is true, Paul has been consistently spouting this nonsense. It is about time New Hampshire voters showed him the door.”

The paper endorsed Newt Gingrich back in November. You can read the Paul piece here.

Of course, the Union-Leader isn’t exactly known for toeing the mildest of lines itself.

But what about that really out there stuff that appeared in Paul’s newsletters over the years? I’d be curious to know how Doug Ross and other Paulistas around here react to that stuff.

Man the barricades; run out the guns! Never mind: It’s just another hyperbolic rant from the SC GOP

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For a brief moment there, when I saw the headline on the release, I had the light of battle in my eye and was calling for my sword… but then I realized it was just more hyperbolic, apocalyptic silliness from the South Carolina GOP:

South Carolina is Under Attack

Over the past few months we have endured the full effects of the federal government’s war against South Carolina. While we try to deal with problems on a state level, they federal government has tried to block our actions multiple times.

For example, the federal government has trampled over our right to hold fair and free elections by striking down Voter ID, taken away our ability to secure our state from illegal immigration while leaving Americas borders unsecured, and nearly derailed the ability of Boeing to create jobs in Charleston thanks to the NLRB.

As our state attempts to monitor our borders, recruit industry, and secure our elections, the federal government’s efforts cripple our ability to improve our state.

Ultimately, the federal government is putting our state’s future in jeopardy, and we have tried to limit ourselves on relying on Washington and the 16 trillion dollars of debt Congress has accrued.

And we will not give up the fight. The federal government will continue to suggest that we can’t secure our own future but the S.C. Senate Republican Caucus will continue the fight against this every step of the way.

-Wesley Donehue
[Senate Republican] Caucus Spokesman

Maybe the folks who make those excruciatingly boring ads — such as this one and this one — for the presidential candidates should get my Pub Politics friend Wesley to write some stuff for them, spice things up a bit. Maybe we’ll see some real fire in a Bachmann ad, since Wesley’s working with her…

I don’t blame Wesley for the nonsense in that message; I have little doubt that his assertions reflect well the views of many of the Republican state senators he works for. They believe this stuff.

The irony here is that, with the exception of the completely uncalled-for (and recently abandoned) outrage of the NLRB business, none of these are cases of the federal government getting aggressive with the state of South Carolina. Quite the opposite. Voter ID was a completely uncalled-for attempt to address a largely imaginary problem in a way that invited invocation of the Voting Rights Act. As for South Carolina’s attempt to completely usurp one of the few functions that is clearly federal, the control of the nation’s borders, well I should smile, as Mark Twain would have said.

And the NLRB thing didn’t turn out to be much of an “attack,” did it?

As satirists viewing us from afar well know, the only entity “crippling” South Carolina’s ability to improve itself is South Carolina. Most of our wounds are self-inflicted.

Even NEWT does mind-numbingly trite ads

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You would think, as idiosyncratic as the guy is, as much of loose cannon as he is, that at least Newt Gingrich could produce ads that don’t seem like they started out vanilla, but then got any trace of any sort of original flavor filtered out of them through a multi-step process.

But he can be just as trite as the king himself, Rick Perry. Triter, even.

That’s disappointing, somehow. I’d like to see a little edginess from this guy, at least. Something that stands up and says, “I’m Newt, and I refuse to be boring!”

No such luck, though. He’s gotten all plain and careful since his numbers went up.

You went the wrong way, King Obama

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Whaddya gonna do with this Romney guy, huh? Dig the latest:

Reporting from West Des Moines, Iowa –—

Speaking to supporters at a chilly outdoor rally, Mitt Romney on Friday sought to cast President Obama as out of touch with the economic pain being felt by average Americans.

“He’s in Hawaii right now. We’re in the cold, in the rain, in the wind because we care about America,” Romney said, speaking in the parking lot of a grocery store. “He just finished his 90th round of golf. We have 25 million Americans who are out of work, stopped looking for work or are underemployed. Home values have come down. The median income in America in the last four years has dropped by 10%.”

He dismissed the Obama administration’s contention that they stopped the recession from getting worse.

“The other day President Obama said, you know, it could be worse,” Romney said. “Sounds like Marie Antoinette, ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”…

This from the guy who, when challenged, immediately offers to bet $10,000.

One thing Mitt’s got is nerve.

But I want to thank him for reminding me of the old Allan Sherman song above. Enjoy.

Unless you’re a kid, you remember Allan Sherman. He’s the “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” guy.

Newt answers flag question as I would

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Our friend Michael Rodgers brings this to my attention:

Brad,

Have you seen this video with Newt in Charleston?

The reactions of the crowd are revolting.  Why would they cheer so
much?  After all, the people of South Carolina want the flag down.
Our will is being thwarted by our legislature.  That’s where we are
today.  This issue is just one example of far too many issues where
partisan politics and legislative dominance trample over what’s
clearly right.

BTW, the Republican presidential primary in SC is just a few days
after MLK day.  It’s Saturday the 21st, when MLK day is Monday the
16th.  Should be an interesting week.

Regards,

Mike

Well, I have to say first that Newt answered the question about the way I would — although perhaps for different reasons, since he’s running for the GOP nomination here. Of course what we South Carolinians fly on the State House grounds is our business and no one else’s. And if I were a presidential candidate passing through from elsewhere, if asked, I would say, “That’s your problem, not mine.”

If someone from elsewhere could somehow coerce South Carolina into removing the flag, nothing would be accomplished. The only way that anything is accomplished by furling the flag is if South Carolina grows up enough to decide, on its own, through our elected representatives, to take that step.

That step is long, long overdue. Every day that we leave it there is an insult to our ancestors as well as to ourselves and our neighbors today. We’re not hurting anyone in the world but South Carolina by flying it, and it’s incumbent on us to decide we’ve engaged in far more than enough nonsense, and put the thing away. A banner designed to be taken into battle in a war we lost 146 years ago should be under glass in a museum (and we have one for that purpose), or represented with a modest bronze plaque, not flying as though it and what it stands for is alive.

It’s no one else’s concern. Of course, it helps them decide what they think of us. But so far, we’ve been satisfied to let them think what they like. Which is fine, in a way. Because in the end, we need to get rid of the flag because we understand that it’s wrong, that it’s something we need to put behind us. If we did it simply because of what others thought, and still wanted, deep-down, to fly it, nothing would be accomplished. We would not have grown as a people.

Everything I’ve ever written about the flag has been aimed at persuading my fellow South Carolinians who are not yet convinced that we need to go ahead and take it down. It’s about us, the people of this state. Always has been.

Perry ads amazingly trite, yet revelatory

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I continue to be fascinated by Rick Perry’s TV ads, largely because they are so startlingly lacking in anything that might ordinarily fascinate an active mind.

They are so formulaic, so trite, so astoundingly lacking in originality, that it is truly remarkable.

And on top of that, they are badly executed — which is also surprising, since you would think that anyone would at least be able to present such simplistic messages without tripping over his laces. Take this bit of the script of the ad above:

The fox guarding the henhouse is like asking a Congressman to fix Washington: bad idea.

Obviously, what is meant here is, “asking a Congressman to fix Washington is like the fox guarding the henhouse.” The idea being criticized, being held up as a bad idea, is asking a congressman to fix Washington, and the universally understood cliche to which it is being compared is the fox guarding the henhouse. But the announcer gets it completely backward. Even if you told me that the script writer’s first language wasn’t English, it wouldn’t excuse this, because logic knows no language.

But, as bad as these ads are, they do reveal things about Perry, and with great economy of language.

Once again, what we learn about him (as we did back here) is that he assumes — or should I say, presumes — that the president of the United States is an absolute monarch who rules by fiat, with the other branches being completely subject to his will.

In this case, he plays on populist resentment of people who make more money than the voter (and he’s a Republican, right?) to endear the voter to his plan to emasculate and hobble the legislative branch. Elect me, he is saying, and I will wave my scepter and this thing you resent, this Congress, will become a poor, feeble thing, unable to wield any power any more (and unable to be a check on my power), too busy trying to scratch out a living back home to be an obstacle to the new King.

I say all this as someone who — as my readers well know — is a longtime champion of executive power here in South Carolina (a governor in control of the whole executive branch, a strong mayor in Columbia). But that’s because on the state and local levels here, the executive is so weak as to be unable to perform its proper function in a healthy government. That is not the case in Washington, and in any case, Perry overreaches to an extent that is shocking, and would be under any circumstance. Yes, he does so out of deep ignorance of the rule of law under our constitution, but that doesn’t make the (fortunately remote) prospect of him being president less chilling.

There’s a deeper irony here. In reality, the only way to bring about this poor shadow of the present Congress is, of course, to ask Congress to do it. No president could bring that about unilaterally. And as he says, asking Congress to “fix” Washington (according to his notion of “fixing”) is indeed like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Or the other way around. Whatever.

Caucuses are, indeed, no way to pick a president

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Samuel Tenenbaum brings this piece to my attention:

No way to pick a president

By , Wednesday, December 28, 11:50 AM

As the breathless, panting political class turns its eager eyes to Iowa, every sane American needs to step back and ask the obvious question: Is this any way to pick a president?

Our country is essentially coming to a halt to watch what 120,000 idiosyncratic voters in an idiosyncratic state do….

Absolutely, Matt Miller. I’ve said the same myself, four years ago:

By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” said the great and powerful Oz. But I say it’s the guy voting in the privacy of a booth that we should heed. It’s the Iowa caucuses we should ignore.
As I write this [we’re talking Thursday afternoon, folks], I don’t know who won last night, and don’t care. I’ve got my eye on New Hampshire — and, of course, South Carolina.
The Washington Post’s David Broder had it right in his Thursday column when he called the caucuses a “double-distortion mirror” on the campaign. The turnout is tiny, consisting only of people who are willing to attend a two-hour night meeting during the week and declare their preference in front of the world.
Forget what happened last night if you were watching to see which candidate has the strongest support among voters of either party. All the caucuses measure is who can most effectively corral the most highly committed, vocal partisans at a given moment. It tests organization — and a very specialized form of it at that. Organizational skill is important — but it’s hardly everything. [Note this amendment today to this opinion.]…

Today, I heard them on NPR talking about the money being spent on TV ads in Iowa. You’re kidding me, right? The whole marketing world has turned away from mass media (preferring more targeted approaches) to the extent that the industry could no longer afford to pay guys like David Stanton and Robert Ariail and me, and yet these idiots are spending good money on TV ads to reach the handful of people who will attend caucuses? Really? Why not just go to their houses and talk to them?

When I was a very young political reporter, I went to Iowa to write about the 1980 caucuses. I thought they were important. They weren’t then (Ronald Reagan lost), and they aren’t now. But here we all are, with bated breath, again…

All you “progressives” out there: Don’t forget to vote for Mitt Romney next month!

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Last night I was cleaning out email, and ran across this item from last week.

Actually, technically, it’s from 2002. In the clip, Mitt Romney assures Massachusetts voters, “My views are progressive.” And you know, at the moment, it may have been true.

In any case, you may have noticed he doesn’t say that much any more, for some reason.

Well played, sir: Newt says he’s got Wilkins

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Not brother David, the ex-speaker and ambassador, but Billy Wilkins, the former head of the 4th Circuit:

After Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed Mitt Romney for president this morning, S.C. frontrunner Newt Gingrich responded by announcing the endorsements of Billy and Debra Wilkins.

Billy Wilkins is a partner at the Nexsen Pruet law firm and a former chief justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. His wife Debra is a former member of the board of visitors at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Gingrich’s campaign noted that Billy Wilkins is “most recently known for playing a pivotal role in Boeing’s decision to locate in South Carolina.”…

Billy Wilkins

Maybe it doesn’t cut much ice with the rank and file voters who still like Nikki Haley, but they are, ahem, in the minority now. As for this minority of one, I certainly find the endorsement of Judge Wilkins to be more impressive than the one Romney bagged. For what little that’s worth. Newt’s all like, Yo, maybe you’ve got Nikki, but I’ve got somebody serious. So much for me being the wild man, huh?

Interesting that Romney, the closest thing the GOP field has to an establishment candidate, gets the Tea Party governor’s backing, but Gingrich the Perpetual Insurgent comes up with an endorsement as Establishment as Billy Wilkins.

You just can’t make any assumptions in this contest…

Haley’s for Romney: So does that mean Gingrich has sewn up SC now?

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I suppose you’ve seen this news:

Haley endorses Romney

By ADAM BEAM and GINA SMITH – [email protected], [email protected]

Gov. Nikki Haley has endorsed Mitt Romney for president and will campaign with him in Greenville today and Myrtle Beach and Charleston tomorrow.

“He is a conservative businessman who has spent his life working in the economy, and he understands exactly how jobs are created,” Haley said in a news release from Romney’s campaign.

In a none-too-veiled slap at Romney’s chief GOP rival, former House Speaker Next Gingrich, Haley added, “He is not a creature of Washington, and he knows what it means to make decisions – real decisions – not simply cast a vote.”…

The first thought this prompts is, Does this mean Newt Gingrich is a shoo-in in South Carolina? Maybe I’d better call back the folks from the British consulate and say, Hey, I now know what’s going to happen.

Or not. This year is so unpredictable that even an endorsement by a Republican who is less popular in South Carolina than Barack Obama is not a sure thing.

Now, confession time: I feel a little bad that that was my first thought. Because it means I’m thinking like those people who used to say that “The State‘s endorsement is the kiss of death.” Of course, they were so demonstrably wrong — I ran the numbers, and over the course of the years I was on the editorial board, 75 percent of our endorsees in general elections won — but I still hate to be so dismissive.

But what am I gonna do? That was the first thing it occurred to me to say. Of course, you might say that I could wait a minute, and have other thoughts. To which I would say, Hey, this is a blog, not print.

I suppose, if I do think a bit more, I would say:

  • No news here. It’s what everyone expected. She was for him in 2008, back when she was a mere backbencher. And he endorsed her early for governor (something I still can’t get used to; outsiders interfering in our elections).
  • Romney is using the standard playbook here, getting the endorsement of the sitting governor — as though he were George H.W. Bush, and she were Carroll Campbell. Well, he isn’t. And she isn’t. And this is a year in which the playbook seems to have been torn up. But we’ll see.
  • I wonder what she would have done had Sarah Palin stayed in it?

By the way, the national media still don’t get Nikki Haley and South Carolina. They think it’s a biggie, or at least some of them do. Samuel Tenenbaum said he was taken aback when he saw this reported on MSNBC at 5 this morning. (Routine for him; Samuel is an early riser.) But probably not everyone in SC reacted the way he did. Or the way I did. It takes all kinds to make up a South Carolina.

Which is my way of saying, maybe this is a bigger deal than I think it is. But it seems unlikely.

Huntsman passes Ron Paul, climbs to 3rd in N.H.

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Jon Huntsman, back when he was spending more time in SC.

What does “bumped” mean to you? When I saw this Tweet this morning:

Huntsman bumped to third place with 13 percent in New Hampshire poll http://bit.ly/tChRZR

… I thought they were saying he had been higher than 3rd, and had been “bumped” down — like getting bumped from a flight or something. Which would have been news to me that he had been doing that well.

But what they meant was that he was “bumped up,” and is now behind only Romney and Gingrich. Which, actually, was also news to me:

A new poll found Jon Huntsman with 13 percent support from likely Republican and independent voters surveyed in New Hampshire.

The 7News/Suffolk University poll released late Wednesday found Huntsman in third place among likely Republican and New Hampshire voters, trailing Mitt Romney (with 38 percent) and Newt Gingrich (with 20). The survey’s findings are the best yet for Huntsman in the Granite State. Previously, his best poll in New Hampshire showed him in fourth place at 11 percent, behind Romney, Gingrich and Ron Paul….

The modest gains in the 7News/Suffolk University poll reflect Huntsman’s near-exclusive focus on performing well in the early primary state. Huntsman had previously polled at 9 percent when 7News/Suffolk University surveyed the GOP primary field with the same questions last month.

Huntsman is staking his presidential campaign’s future on New Hampshire. He hopes that if he can perform well there, he can use the momentum to help him win successive victories in later states….

So now you know what Huntsman’s been up to. I was wondering, since I hadn’t seen him around here lately.

It seems to be paying off for him. Although it seems late for him to make such a move.

Wouldn’t it be something if, at the last minute, Republican voters said, “Hey, why don’t we nominate somebody who has a chance to win?” That would be one for the books, given the way they’ve been acting lately.

It’s particularly interesting given how well Ron Paul is doing in Iowa. Paul, of course, represents a trend whereby Republicans are running even farther away from electability. Huntsman represents the opposite.

Tell Her Majesty that I just don’t KNOW…

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Yesterday, two representatives from Her Majesty’s Government came to see me to talk politics, as they periodically do.

It can be fun to play the local expert, whether for national or foreign media, or in service of the Special Relationship — especially if you’re an Anglophile like me. Maybe I can’t see “Tinker, Tailor” where I live (yet), but I can contribute to a report that might, just might, cross a latter-day George Smiley’s desk. OK, so it’s not very likely, but hey, I can dream…

The temptation is to sound like you really know what’s going on, even if you don’t — like The Tailor of Panama, or Our Man in Havana. But I’m not the type to mislead HMG. Perish the thought.

So yesterday, I had to tell my visitors that I just can’t explain what’s happening in the South Carolina primary, and therefore can’t predict anything. And that’s the unfortunate truth.

I don’t know why Newt Gingrich is suddenly leading by double digits in polls in South Carolina, other than it’s his turn. I don’t know whether that trend will continue, because I don’t understand the dynamics that led her to this point.

And one of the problems is this: I’m not hearing from people who are Gingrich fans. I have to acknowledge that maybe there are things I don’t hear, or am not exposed to, because I’m no longer the editorial page editor of the state’s largest newspaper. Maybe that’s why I feel like I understand what’s happening now less than I understood the situation four years ago.

But you know what? So much of what I was hearing and seeing then was through my blog. I wrote relatively little about national politics in the paper, so most of my interactions in that area were online. And to the extent that I was seen as someone engaged in writing about the presidential race, it was online. For instance, a number of the national and international media types who were interviewing me initially didn’t even know I worked at the newspaper; they had come to me as a widely-read blogger.

And I’m more widely read online now than I was then. My monthly page views are at least four times what they were then. And yet…

  • My traffic hasn’t been steadily climbing in the months leading up to the primary, the way it did four years ago. It hit a peak in August, then dropped a bit.
  • I  haven’t had a request for an interview from national or international sources since I spoke with E.J. Dionne at the start of November, which would be weird anytime, but especially with a primary coming up.
  • I just don’t run into people who are excited about the upcoming primary, either online or in person. Think about it — beyond Doug’s perpetual support for Ron Paul, who have you seen here who is pumped about a candidate? Well, it’s like that in the wider world. Quick — name five people you know who are eager to vote for Newt? You probably can’t. I know I can’t. People may be saying they’ll support Newt when a pollster asks, but they’re not going around bubbling with public excitement about it.
  • There were several national and international advocacy groups that had set up SC offices for the duration four years ago — and they had done it months before now. By the summer of 2007, they were up and running. This time, I know of one such group that has started a local office in recent months — One, the Bono group. I know a lot of nonprofits are far less flush with money than they were then, but it’s still remarkable.

Yes, I know that the buzz in SC should only be half of what it was four years ago, since only one party is having a primary. But it’s really much less than half. Things just feel dead by comparison.

I think one reason for that is expressed in that same Winthrop poll I referenced above. It also shows that 59 percent of those polled — and that includes Republicans — believe that Obama’s going to be elected. That, combined with a lower energy level (compared to last year) among Tea Partiers, has led to a really subdued campaign.

In a normal campaign, the fact that Newt is so far ahead, this late, would mean that he had it more or less locked up. This year, I don’t know. The polls give so easily this year, and can so easily take away. And this is Newt Gingrich — a guy with a well-known talent for self-destruction.

Normally, at this point, South Carolinians would be coalescing around the Republican most likely to with the nomination — usually, the establishment. A Bush. Bob Dole. John McCain. Now, the very definition of what it is to be a Republican — much less a South Carolina Republican — is more up in the air than at any time I remember.

So it seems to me there’s a better-than-even chance that SC won’t pick the eventual winner this time. The whole process is too wobbly, and less susceptible to steadying factors than in the past. And if that happens, there will be even less energy, and much less national attention, focused on the SC GOP primary four years from now.

But I just don’t know. When it’s hard to explain why what is already happening is happening, it’s very hard to predict what will happen next.

Yeah, but from NOW ON, he’s serious about this…

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Thought I’d better share with you this startling development:

Remember that pledge that a conservative Christian group in Iowa asked all the Republican candidates to take this summer? The one that made them vow to uphold the institution of marriage (and reject pornography, and Islamic law, and marriage rights for gays, and…)?

Newt Gingrich declined to sign it back then, when he was way behind in the polls. But now, it seems, he has changed his mind. USA Today reports Gingrich has now signed the pledge, which, among other things, commits him to supporting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Oh yes, and it commits him to not committing adultery—something he has been known to do on a few occasions in the past. Twice-divorced, he began an affair with his current wife, Callista, while still married to another woman in 1993.

In a letter explaining his support for the pledge, circulated by the Iowa Family Leader, Gingrich wrote, “I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.” Politico has the full letter here….

Earlier today, in connection with Newt, we were having a discussion about various Semitic peoples. In the argot of one of those peoples, what Newt has just exhibited is called chutzpah.

How is Newt Gingrich like Alvin Greene?

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Slate examines the subject of whether Newt Gingrich is more than merely an excitable boy:

Is Newt Nuts?

Consider the symptoms: Bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, impulsiveness, spending sprees …

… We’re quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as “crazy,” and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I’ve long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense. I’m not a psychiatrist, of course, and it’s impossible to diagnose someone at a distance. Without medical records that he hasn’t released, we can’t know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother’s manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms—bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees—that go beyond the ordinary politician’s normal narcissism.

One possibility is that Newt suffers, and benefits from, the milder affliction of hypomania. In his 2005 book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, John D. Gartner, a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist, argues that this form of extreme optimism explains the achievements of everyone from Christopher Columbus to Andrew Carnegie. Gartner writes: “Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with questions ‘just doesn’t get it.’” Hypomanics lack discipline, act on impulse, suffer from over-confidence, and often lack judgment.

Is Newt delusional? Yes… except… the world keeps conforming itself to his delusions, making them reality.

I mean, he was crazy to run… I mean, come on, a guy with his baggage? But now he’s the frontrunner.

He had the same thing happen in the early 90s. He was the mad insurgent, the bomb-throwing back-bencher who thought he was born to rule — but he became speaker. The world changed in order to fit his megalomaniacal delusion.

It’s kind of like the Alvin Greene phenomenon. He was crazy to run, right? But he won. So who’s crazy?

‘The country Solynda’: I say we should invade it, take over, and let Rick Perry be its new president

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Rick Perry has outdone himself this time:

Hours after Saturday’s presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry continued his string of memorable campaign gaffes.

CNN Political Ticker reports that Perry campaignedin the Hawkeye State, stopping in Ames. He focused on energy, taking shots at the Obama administration’s handling of government spending.

“No greater example of it than this administration sending millions of dollars into the solar industry, and we lost that money,” Perry said. “I want to say it was over $500 million that went to the country Solynda.”

You know that country, don’t you? It’s one of the three in the Axis of Doh!

Newt has GOP establishment sweating bullets

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Peggy Noonan does a good job today of telling us just how uneasy the GOP establishment is about the rise of Newt Gingrich:

… What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon. He will start saying wild things and promising that he may bomb Iran but he may send a special SEAL team in at night to secretly dig Iran up, and fly it to Detroit, where we can keep it under guard, and Detroiters can all get jobs as guards, “solving two problems at once.” They’re afraid he’ll start saying, “John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him,” and “Sure, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, but only after I explained how people can think fast, slow and at warp speed. He owes me everything.”

There are many good things to say about Newt Gingrich. He is compelling and unique, and, as Margaret Thatcher once said, he has “tons of guts.”

But this is a walk on the wild side.

She also understands that the fact that Newt makes the GOP establishment very nervous is a plus for him with the GOP base. Quite a little self-destructive spiral they have going in that party, huh? If the grownups, who’ve been there and know better, say, “Don’t do it!” they just can’t wait to rush in…

Did Colbert actually BUY a piece of the GOP primary, even provisionally?

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That seems to be what I read earlier in the week, and shook my head in disbelief and moved on, before reading it again.

The State said Stephen Colbert failed to buy “naming rights” to the presidential primary, as one would expect, but then matter-of-factly drops this bombshell:

But the GOP did agree to place a question on its Jan. 21 primary ballot after Colbert, a South Carolina native, in return pledged a “significant contribution” from his super PAC to the S.C. Republican Party. (A GOP spokesman declined to say how big that pledge was.)…

Officials with the S.C. Republican Party met with Colbert a few times and reached an agreement to place a question about “corporate personhood” on the primary ballot. But they said no to the naming rights and debate co-sponsorship offers…

Really? Can that be? Nah, I said, and moved on…

Then I read this in The Free Times:

The Comedy Central satirist — and South Carolina native — approached state Republican Party officials a few months ago about making a significant contribution to the party through his Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrowsuper PAC.

In return, Colbert requested the party place a ballot question on the state’s first-in-the-South GOP presidential primary set for Jan. 21, that dealt with corporate personhood. The party agreed and on Nov. 11 asked state election officials to add a ballot referendum that asked voters to decide whether “corporations are people” or “only people are people.”…

But then, it apparently didn’t actually happen, because the party’s Matt Moore said “that the party never received a contribution from Colbert’s PAC.” And in any case the Supreme Court recently struck all such questions from the ballot (nice going there, justices!)

So basically, I guess if I had enough money, I could at least in theory go to the GOP and get it to place on the ballot a “referendum” question asking voters, say, whether they think The constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment should be waived in the case of the network hammerheads who cancelled “Firefly” in its first season.

Or maybe something else. Something actually controversial.

Folks, I like comedy as much as the next guy. And you know how little I think of political parties. But I hate to see one degrade itself to this extent. I mean, Hello! This guy makes his living MAKING FUN of y’all…

He’s not the kind you have to wind up on Sundays

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Just to cleanse the spiritual palate, brethren, I invoke Brother Tull to share with us a musical interlude.

This song has been running through my head a good bit lately. (Seeing “all the bishops” — or at least, all the Anglican clergy — lined up and harmonizing at Jason’s ordination the other day was but one instance in which it has come to mind.) You may find that interesting, in connection with my outrage at the tawdry way Rick Perry is trying to wind God up and make him toddle across the room, beating a toy drum that says “Perry for President.”

Perry’s message, considered most charitably, is after all that God has a place in the public square. He’s not supposed to be kept in a steepled ghetto. God is for every day, not an hour on Sunday.

I agree with that with all my heart and soul. God, properly considered, is for every day, every moment. (For that matter, it’s not for us to say what God’s for; it’s up to us to figure out what WE’RE intended for.) That’s one reason I like this song.

But I would submit that that includes the moments in which you try to exploit God to your own ends. You don’t wind him up then, either. Rather, you endeavor to alter yourself to fit His expectations.

This is a tough thing to talk about because we’re not supposed to judge, either — are we? So people get away with some really horrific stuff, because who are we to say? If another man testifies that this is how he experiences God, who are we to condemn?

And so people get away with all sorts of stuff, and if we protest, we are painted as being one of those who wants to keep God in a box.

And there are such people. Good, well-meaning people, quite often — although they are confused. They confuse the First Amendment with Jefferson’s views (when he wasn’t involved with it), and then go the further step of assuming that a ban on establishment of religion by Congress implies that we individual citizens (and that includes officeholders) are not supposed to talk about religion in the public sphere.

They are wrong. And their wrongness is all the more wrong because they create a space in which someone like Perry can construct a lie about a “war on religion.” And everything just gets worse. They are wrong, and he is wrong, and I suppose I’m wrong, too, for judging both.

But I feel better when I listen to the music. Don’t think you have to turn up your speakers when it starts out so soft. It builds.

The nuclear escalation of Rick Perry’s unholy war

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Wow. I inadvertently backed into that last post.

I had looked at  the CNN report (the text, anyway), and the Perry “holiday greeting” from last year that made it look hypocritical. But I had failed to look at the ad that prompted the CNN report to begin with.

I thought I had seen Rick Perry take riding God like a hobby horse about as far as he could, in the ad I showed you last week.

But if that was Perry trying to be a holy warrior, in the latest ad, that war goes nuclear.

There is no way that I could ever support for president a man who tries so nakedly to bend God to his own ends. And that is a hard thing to explain to the sort of people Perry is trying to appeal to. And that just divides our country more and more (and leaves me feeling more and more alienated, since I can neither identify with secularists nor those who could actually believe the POTUS is engaged in a “war on religion”). And it’s so unnecessary.

How can a man think it’s SO important for him to be elected that he would do this? This is stomach-turning stuff.

And so this is Advent, and what have we done?

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And so that time has rolled around again, a time when some of our avowedly “conservative” brethren start griping that no one will let them say “Merry Christmas.”

This has always struck me as one of the non-ier nonissues of the world, not least because it always comes up during Advent, not during Christmas, so why do they want to say “Merry Christmas” anyway, and doesn’t “Happy Holidays” cover it… but I’m not writing this to get all liturgical on you.

Anyway, Rick Perry, who seems to have decided that an evangelical offense is his best chance to get back into the game in Iowa, is now taking a big stand for Christmas. And he’s doing it with such apocryphal assertions as this, on CNN’s Situation Room:

What we’re seeing from the left, of which I would suggest to you, President Obama is a member of the left and substantial left-of-center beliefs, that you can’t even have a Christmas party. You can’t say a prayer at school.

Say what?, you’re thinking. But he’s counting on people who are not thinking to be impressed.

And I hate to put it that way, because I sound like one of those very godless secularists Perry’s trying to demonize. There are indeed people who see people of faith as simple fools.

But that means they see ME as a simple fool, so I’m not one of them.

By saying he’s trying to appeal to people who are not thinking, I’m saying that Perry himself is the one insulting the intelligence of people of faith. Particularly when those people can look back at Gov. Perry’s own official “holiday” greeting of last Dec. 22:

Gov. Perry: Keep Veterans, First Responders in Your Thoughts and Prayers this Holiday Season

Wednesday, December 22, 2010  •  Austin, Texas  •  Press Release

The holidays are a special time of year to pause and take stock of the many blessings we enjoy, not just as human beings, but as Americans and Texans. Of all those blessings, I’d offer that the most precious is our freedom.

There are thousands of Texans serving the cause of freedom all over the world, in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Driven by a dedication to our country and communities, they’ll spend the holidays thousands of miles from parents, friends, spouses and children.

I encourage you to keep our fighting men and women in your thoughts and prayers, along with their families who anxiously await their return. At the same time, I hope you’ll remember the folks who keep our neighborhoods safe: our state’s first responders.

While we enjoy the comforts of home with loved ones, these brave men and women are on the job, providing care in the back of an ambulance, preparing to respond to a fire call or patrolling our international border.
We should never take them for granted and we should definitely keep them in our prayers as they sacrifice for our safety.

So, during this holiday season, remember to thank a first responder or salute a veteran for their service and pray for God’s protection on them and their families.

May God bless you and, through you, may He continue to bless the Great State of Texas.

Did you see any Jesus in that greeting? Neither did I. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fine. It’s just that you wouldn’t know that to hear Perry now.

Mainly what Perry has done is amuse the godless secularists mightily with his hypocrisy, which is why this inconsistency is flying around the Internet, which is why I knew about it to share it with you.

Nothing like a quiet, holy, contemplative Advent, huh?