Another great election episode. “Now pick a white male and we’ll elect him.”
Category Archives: Election
A Republican for Health Care
63 Years Ago Today | NewMexiKen [hat tip]
President Harry S. Truman, in his 1949 State of the Union Address:
We must spare no effort to raise the general level of health in this country. In a nation as rich as ours, it is a shocking fact that tens of millions lack adequate medical care. We are short of doctors, hospitals, nurses. We must remedy these shortages. Moreover, we need–and we must have without further delay–a system of prepaid medical insurance which will enable every American to afford good medical care.
”Santorum? Is that Latin for asshole?”
Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey said it best.
The Fractured Republicans
Huntsman on Iowa: ‘Nobody cares’ – PostPartisan – The Washington Post
“A message for the winner of the Iowa caucuses?” Huntsman asked with a smile. “Welcome to the winner. Nobody cares.”
Huntsman on Iowa: ‘Nobody cares’ – PostPartisan – The Washington Post
Santorum, Huntsman and the future of conservatism – The Washington Post
If the Republicans want to have a genuinely searching debate about the future of their party, they’d send Santorum and Huntsman off for the long fight. Huntsman is a forceful economic conservative but also resolutely modern. He’s a defender of science, a hard-eyed realist on foreign affairs who rejects Santorum’s neoconservative moralism, and he speaks the policy language of an upper middle class that likes its politics to focus on deficits and our future competition with China.
Santorum, Huntsman and the future of conservatism – The Washington Post
Three very different GOPs in Iowa – PostPartisan – The Washington Post
[T]he split in the Republican Party is no longer between conservatives and moderates, but between members of the party who are very conservative and those who are only somewhat conservative. The days of Rockefeller Republicans are long gone. Close to half of Iowa caucus-goers thought of themselves as very conservative; a third said they were somewhat conservative. Fewer than a fifth were moderates, including a very tiny (and brave) group of self-described liberals.
Three very different GOPs in Iowa – PostPartisan – The Washington Post
Ron Paul’s consistency doesn’t make him right – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com
[U]nless you enjoy salmonella in your food and lead in your paint, unless you think it’s OK that your doctor has no medical degree and your lawyer no license, unless you’re fine with breathing sooty air and drinking tainted water and unless you really think a black woman in Mississippi, locked out of public places by threat of violence and force of law, should have been required to wait on market forces to rescue her, you must regard Paul’s moral imbecility with a certain appalled awe.
Heaven help us if the intellectual rigidity he symbolizes is really the only alternative to the intellectual malleability of so many of his colleagues.
At its best, government vindicates and defends a people’s noblest ideals. The Civil Rights Act was government at its best. Paul disputes this and styles himself a defender of freedom for so doing. Too bad he can’t spend a day being black in Mississippi in 1964. He might emerge with a better understanding of that word.
As it is, Paul’s extremism only proves this much: Emerson didn’t know the half of it. ["A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." – Ralph Waldo Emerson]
Ron Paul’s consistency doesn’t make him right – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com
Happy Bill of Rights Day!
Tweet for freedom on Dec. 15 – From Our Inbox – MiamiHerald.com
The irony is that most of us honor the Fourth of July because we believe it’s a day on which Americans secured their freedom. But the truth is that the Declaration of Independence really only secured freedom for white and wealthy men [mjh: landowners]. It took freedom of speech, press, religion, petition and assembly — the five freedoms of the First Amendment — to lead to suffrage for women, the emancipation of slaves and equality for all. Please join in celebrating freedom this Dec. 15. It’s long overdue.
Tweet for freedom on Dec. 15 – From Our Inbox – MiamiHerald.com
No modern committee, especially one full of attorneys, I’m sorry to say, could come up with such a succinct yet powerful document. Two hundred-twenty years later, we are still striving to get there, but we have the map. The Constitution is a living document subject to the times. Claiming “original intent” is the height of arrogance and ignorance.
The Bill of Rights | NewMexiKen
Originally 12 amendments were proposed to the legislatures of the 14 states by the First Congress. [read more…]
Newty Gingrinch has a big lead in NM and I’d cheer if I weren’t vomiting
Gingrich has a big lead in NM | NMPolitics.net
By Heath Haussamen
Newt Gingrich has a big lead in New Mexico in the Republican presidential primary, a new poll indicates.
The survey from the left-leaning group Public Policy Polling found Gingrich leading with the support of 39 percent of Republican primary voters to Mitt Romney’s 14 percent, Gary Johnson’s 11 percent, 8 percent each for Ron Paul and Rick Perry, 6 percent for Michele Bachmann, 3 percent for Rick Santorum, and 2 percent for Jon Huntsman.
The survey of 300 GOP primary voters was conducted between Saturday and Monday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percent.
Gingrich has a big lead in NM | NMPolitics.net
Why should NM Republicans be smarter than any others? Or have a memory. Or care about his ethics, adultery, ad nauseum. Vomiting again.
The view from Europe: Republican candidates are “ruining the reputation of the United States.”
A Commentary by Marc Pitzke
Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they’ve been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what’s still the most powerful job in the world.
As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop. …
It’s horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They’re ruining the reputation of the United States.
They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe. …
What a nice club that is. A club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses. "A starting point for a chronicle of American decline," was how David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, described the current Republican race.
The Tea Party would take issue with that assessment. They cheer the loudest for the worst, only to see them fail, as expected, one by one. Which goes to show that this "movement," sponsored by Fox News, has never been interested in the actual business of governing or in the intelligence and intellect that requires. They are only interested in marketing themselves, for ratings and dollars.