74% of the respondents said that Sarah Palin should not run in 2012. So much for any love from her base and employer, huh?
Political Cartoon of the Day
Say that Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012. Even though that possibility is slim, in my opinion, she would almost guarantee the GOP slim voting support from independents/moderates, democrats, and Latinos.
H/T: Tony Auth
“Voter’s Didn’t Vote FOR the GOP, but Against Democrats”
You would have thought that some of the brighter minds in the Republican Party would have realized that the voters didn’t vote FOR them … they voted AGAINST Democrats. This “Hey! How cool are we!” stuff is going to get tiring.
This John Boehner guy? Still not sure about him. As Andrew C. McCarthy pointed out in this column, Boehner wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street journal about the election and opportunities for Republicans and didn’t once use the word “debt” in that article. At the start of World War II a single American’s share of our national debt was about $370. Today that figure is at $44,370. Boehner focused in that article on earmarks. Earmarks account for less than one percent of our budget. Hey, Boehner … how about a little focus on the REAL problems out there?
We need to ride the Republicans even harder than we did the Democrats. With the Democrats there were alternatives. If the Republicans start enjoying their power a bit too much, and forget why they were put back in charge of the House … then where do we turn?
And the GOP social conservatives? Concentrate, for a while, on how you live your own lives. Nobody is going to force you to have an abortion. Nobody is going to force you to marry someone of your sex. Nobody is going to coerce you into a homosexual act. And you can still pray whenever and wherever you want. Getting back on those tired rants isn’t going to save our country .. it will serve, instead, to deliver us right back into the hands of those who want to destroy — or “fundamentally transform” – America.
~Neil Boortz, a libertarian talk radio host.
Neil hits a lot of this right on. I have been reading more lately from a few different libertarian media outlets. I believe they have some generally good points – government intervention in say, sexting regulations, creates more problems than solutions – but I don’t side with the government standing idly while millions of gallons of oil spill out into the gulf.
Back to Neil’s point, political scientist Seth Masket makes a similar conclusion, that political parties can bring upon themselves their own demise by solely voting and working in partisan ways. Although each party has its own policy priorities that may resonate wit certain sects of the public (health care reform, tax cuts for the rich), they remain quite partisan if they stay solely Democrat or Republican and not bipartisan. Again, the common good is an underlying factor even if it isn’t unambiguously shouted from the roof tops.
Back again to Neil, when a majority of the voting public gets tired of an agenda that they feel anathema (at its worst) towards or simply disagree with, they get bounced out. In this case in 2010, the majority went for Republicans. Unfortunately, as Neil pointed out, guys like John Boehner are so wrapped up in the classic toxic right wing rhetoric that is quite far from our fiscal reality.
A New Low for Adams and Jefferson…Part II
Draino beat me to posting the circa 1800 attack ad video!
I found some follow up commentary by Doug Mataconis:
More broadly, though, I find this annual media onslaught against “negative ads” to be complete nonsense for the most part. For one thing, the definition of what constitutes a “negative ad” has changed greatly over the years. The most famous (or infamous) negative ads — the 1964 “Daisy” ad, the “Willie Horton” ad, or the racially charged affirmative action ad that Jesse Helms ran in 1990 — have typically been those that have unfairly attacked a candidate on irrelevant or over-the-top grounds. When people refer to “negative ads” today, it’s clear that they’re including not just these types of ads, but also those that seek to, truthfully, contrast candidates or point out items in an opponents record. As long as the ads themselves are truthful, fair, and honest, they seem to me to be completely legitimate, and piling on a candidate who runs these types of ads for running a “negative campaign” is unfair and dishonest. Pointing out the differences between you and your opponent is an important part of a campaign, and candidates shouldn’t be put on the spot for doing that the way Whitman was.
Many of the ads today may use the contrast clause but often it comes off brash and many of the claims made in them are 1) hard to keep up with for means of fact checking and 2) they end up sticking in our heads.
Sarah Palin and Dominion Theology
Nicole Greenfield describes the scary aspects of Sarah Palin’s theocratic politics:
Drawing inspiration from a well-known passage in the first chapter of Genesis in which God grants humans dominion over all living things, dominion theology involves an anthropocentric outlook, which, among other things, favors the interests of humans over animals and the environment. The benefit of drilling for oil in ANWR, from this point of view, outweighs the loss of wildlife and the destruction of their habitat. But dominionism is also part a broader nationalist movement of the Christian Right, one that aspires to influence secular institutions so that the country is ultimately governed by a conservative Christian interpretation of Biblical law—to build a Christian nation. And if Glenn Beck’s “Restore Honor” rally at the end of August was any indication, Sarah Palin certainly subscribes to—or is, at least, willing to publicly and prominently invoke—such an ideology.
Closely related to dominionism, and another possible basis for the anti-environment stances of many conservative Christians, is a dispensationalist eschatology informed by a literal interpretation of the Bible. In this view, prominent within the churches to which Sarah Palin has belonged, biblical prophecies are read from an “end times” perspective, effectively eliminating the need to consider the consequences major environmental decisions, like oil drilling for example, will have on future generations. “There is a way that dispensationalist eschatology feeds into environmental irresponsibility,” says Brian McLaren, a prominent evangelical pastor and author. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
That helped make sense in my head a few bits of Palin’s approach to theology, her desire to drill in ANWR (which she claims is uninhabited by animals), and her American Exceptionalism. She brings to the tentative 2012 election scene a short sighted and nationalist view of religion and politics. I hope those who are not literalists do not get tricked into buying into her scheme.
Find Your Inner “Chuck Norris”
Add a bit of humor, some Tea Party antics, and a Chuck Norris cameo and you have a good video.
Owch..
“Why Sarah Palin decided to get in the race is beyond me. I don’t know why she feels compelled to get into primaries all over the country. … Well, yes, I wish she [would butt out of contested primaries] because what she is doing is dividing the Republican Party at a time when we don’t need to be divided,” – Congressman Jack Kingston.
Candidates That Make Me Sick
Ill stick this to being a bipartisan effort. I won’t wine over Sarah Palin, but when I see candidates like below, I don’t know what to say:
More:
Asked if what she had in mind was more like the Japanese internment camps of the World War II era, Baker said, “something like that. But unfortunately in the Japanese camps they detaineed American citiziens. The only ones I want to detain are the ones who are illegal.”
She added, “You’ve gotta have places for them to eat and sleep and breathe fresh air. It can be a tent city … You don’t want to make them too comfortable or they’ll want to come back.”
Baker’s website lists five “reasons” not to tolerate illegal immigrants, including “prostitution.”
Why are people clapping? How many of the people there in attendance are Christians who worship a homeless man who was not greeted in his hometown? Why do we have to think this way? These “truths” spouted by some candidates are miles from reality and will definitely NOT guarantee any Republican votes in that Florida district. Even beyond politics, this is a horrible thing to say towards fellow human beings. Have we forgotten the beloved love of God that is directed towards all humans that should be our core identity?
Election Map
A neat guide for the House, Senate, and Gubernatorial races across the USA.