Santorum just dropped out of the race! I’m guessing this will only bolster Gingrich’s resolve to remain in this thing till the convention.
If you’re keeping score at home
– April 10, 2012
republicans Archive
3
Republicans Oppose the Violence Against Women Act Because Mexicans
– March 15, 2012
They’re taking the war on women national, people:
“I favor the Violence Against Women Act and have supported it at various points over the years, but there are matters put on that bill that almost seem to invite opposition,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who opposed the latest version last month in the Judiciary Committee. “You think that’s possible? You think they might have put things in there we couldn’t support that maybe then they could accuse you of not being supportive of fighting violence against women?”
The legislation would continue existing grant programs to local law enforcement and battered women shelters, but would expand efforts to reach Indian tribes and rural areas. It would increase the availability of free legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, extend the definition of violence against women to include stalking, and provide training for civil and criminal court personnel to deal with families with a history of violence. It would also allow more battered illegal immigrants to claim temporary visas, and would include same-sex couples in programs for domestic violence.
Ruh-roh! Messicans!
I don’t know what they think will happen. Will battered women be the new “anchor babies”? Are Republicans really going to step up this patently ridiculous fight for the right of white, straight bros to tell everyone else how to live? Because if they are, I kind of can’t wait to watch the implosion, and I’m kinda of disgusted with the whole thing.
Sometimes I find the best way to deal with the fact one of our national parties is filled with insane people is to take a step back and pretend that it’s all a big teevee show. Granted, it’s relatively easy for me, as I’m not the target of most of the horrible legislation that’s proposed and passed in the name of the culture wars, but a coping mechanism is a coping mechanism. I’ll take what I can get.
(via Cole)
0
The GOP just got that much crazier
– February 28, 2012
Apparently, the sisters from Maine have just been reduced to a single sib. According to USA Today (among others):
One of the Senate’s few remaining Republican moderates shocked the political world on Tuesday and announced she would not seek re-election this year.
Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe announced she would not seek a fourth term because she is tired of the polarization and partisanship that has permeated Washington in recent years.
“Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term,” she said in a statement explaining her decision to retire.
Maine’s junior GOP senator, Susan Collins, said in a statement that she was “absolutely devastated” by Snowe’s decision to leave the Senate. Snowe was first elected in 1994. Collins was elected in 1996.
On the one hand, given Snow’s career-long moderate-ism and the fact that Maine has awarded its four electoral votes to a democratic candidate in each of the last five elections, this is an excellent chance for the Dems to pick up a seat in the Senate. On the other hand, with Snow’s departure, there’s basically only the equally rational Collins (full disclosure: she’s a cousin) and a handful of other ‘pubs keeping the entire senatorial party from devolving into a Caligula-level shit show.
2
All Your Birth Control Are Belong to Us
– February 23, 2012
What the fuck happened at the Republican Presidential debate last night?
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I stopped live-blogging these things a while ago, because they just made me want to cut myself. Or self-immolate on the floor of Congress. In the above, we go from a discussion about birth control to a discussion about… I don’t even know. How denying access to birth control to women is the definition of freedom, or some such. I honestly can’t understand how half the country thinks that giving these people the reins of government would be a good idea. And it’s been depressing the hell out of me (in case you haven’t noticed that I’ve been shying away from this sort of stuff lately). We’re all going to die, and that’s sad (if slightly liberating) enough. But the fact that we’re going to be bossed around by madmen until we finally do perish is, for me, not particularly funny right now.
Umberto Eco wrote, in The Name of the Rose, about Aristotle’s lost works, and particularly a treatise on comedy, whose supposed existence in an obscure monastery’s library in the Middle Ages led to several mysterious deaths, around which the main plot revolves. The professor who taught it to me in my 20th Century Italian Literature class (senior slide, baby), suggested that it was the fear of comedy and the absurd — and their capacity to undermine authority by replacing our fear of the iron fist with laughter at its very existence — that made the antagonist resort to murdering anyone who dared try to find it. And it’s certainly true that satire is an extremely effective method of political protest. Two of the most trusted news sources in American politics today work for Comedy Central, after all. There’s certainly something to be said for that.
The people in the video above? They are pure comedy and absolute absurdism. The shit they’re throwing out is so staggeringly incoherent that the “jokes,” so to speak, write themselves. But to me, that signals something like the end of parody. When all you have to do is quote a politician to get a laugh, a la Tina Fey on SNL, you’ve taken all the fun out of it. It’s not hilarious that people are arguing that easy access to birth control leads to single welfare moms and/or drug addicts. It’s not funny that they’re getting applause for it. And it’s not rotfl that these people are serious contenders for the leadership of the free world.
Or maybe it still is for some people, and maybe I’m just doing a bad job of coping with the deep depravity of human existence right now. At any rate, I’m certainly not laughing about it.
4
Things I would rather not think about
– January 19, 2012
Example one! Rush Limbaugh having sex!
So Newt wanted an open marriage. BFD. At least he asked his wife for permission instead of cheating on her. That’s a mark of character, in my book. Newt’s a victim. We all are. Ours is the horniest generation. We were soldiers in the sex revolution. We were tempted by everything from Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice to Plato’s retreat, Deep Throat to no fault divorce. Many of us paid the ultimate price, AIDS, abortion, or alimony for the cultural marching orders we got. Hell, for all I know we should be getting disability from the government.
Aside from the rank hypocrisy (LOL, Rush Limbaugh: soldier for sexual freedom!), being confronted with the image of Rush Limbaugh copulating with anything other than a Fleshlight makes me pity the poor person on the receiving end (I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I could “pity” an inanimate object; feel sympathy for, perhaps). Or maybe it was Rush on the receiving end. It doesn’t really matter. I still pity anyone who was there. Except Rush. Hope he gets herpes. Also, he probably has a small penis. Okay, I’m done here.
0
But what does Todd Palin think?
– January 9, 2012
Hey, everyone, guess what! Todd Palin announced his super-official Republican Presidential endorsement today! You know what that means? It means that our Very Serious press corps is all over this story like white on rice, or brown on rice, or yellow on rice. It really depends what kind of rice you’re eating! (Hint: this rice makes you go blind, bleed internally, and is not FDA approved):
Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today.
But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said.
Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.
Todd Palin said he believes that being in the political trenches and experiencing the highs and lows help prepare a candidate for the future and the job of president.
He did not criticize any of the other candidates and said his “hat is off to everyone” in the Republican race.
THIS IS NEWS, PEOPLE! BREAKING NEWS! Where to begin?
FIRST OF ALL, we’re talking about Todd Palin. He is Sarah Palin’s husband. In that capacity he has gone snowmobiling, fathered 16 children, and , uh, lived in Alaska. Maybe he caught some fish, too, I dunno. Anyway, so this is obviously a very big deal, know what I mean? It would be like asking Pat Nixon who she endorsed, except that her endorsement, by virtue of being delivered from the grave, would carry a little more gravitas, even if it was anonymously sourced, due to an aide’s “inability to speak about the matter on the record, since Pat Nixon is dead and the endorsement was revealed to a shaman deep in the Ecuadorean rainforest, who then communicated it via a translator while both were high on peyote and firewater.” Or something. You get what I’m saying. This is a big deal. Todd Palin just endorsed Newt Gingrich, y’all. Wise the fuck up.
SECONDLY, this? “[Todd Palin] respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency” — this might be the most important statement from an American politician since the Monroe Doctrine. THAT WAS IN 1820, PEOPLE! WE’VE GOT A JUGGERNAUT ON OUR HANDS! Clearly, what Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich endured in their time in the public spotlight was shameful, shameful. I mean, people HELD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR SHIT! That’s insanity! What kind of country do we live in, a communist one?
Didn’t think so, librul media.
THIRDLY, “hats off to everyone” in the Republican field? Even Mitt Romney? That guy’s practically a socialist. I’ll excuse it, because it’s Todd Palin, and as mentioned, he just delivered the 21st century equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation, but by golly if I’m not a bit flummoxed. Flummoxed, I say. Mitt Romney will be the death of the Republican party, the American way, apple pie, moms, fetuses, and God Him or Herself. Okay, Himself (what am I, a lesbian?), but you get the picture. At least, I hope you do. Todd Palin is the picture, and he just caught fifty pounds of salmon with his bare hands, strutted up to the cold Alaskan beach front with his shirt off, and endorsed Newt Gingrich for President. Now is not the time to let your guard down, even if he did take his hat off for Mitt Romney.
FOURTHLY, another excerpt:
Gingrich’s ability to overcome the obstacle and still move up in the polls showed his ability to campaign and survive, according to Todd Palin, who said Gingrich is not one of the typical “beltway types” and that his campaign has “burst out of the political arena and touched many Americans.”
Do you know what I think of when I think about the phrase “beltway type”? I think about Levi Strauss, and Lee, and Calvin Klein, and Osh-Kosh-b-Gosh. I think about jeans, because when I wear jeans I wear a belt, and the “way” to be the “type” of person who wears “belts” is to wear jeans. But I never see Newt Gingrich in jeans. Have you ever seen Newt Gingrich in jeans? I have not. Oh, sure, maybe he’s worn them once or twice, but certainly not enough to be called a “belt” “way” “type.” I mean, the guy’s a former Speaker of the House, lobbyist, and current Presidential candidate. If that’s what a “belt” “way” “type” is, you can sign me right up. It’s better than wearing jeans, that’s for sure.
LASTLY, Sarah Palin. I’ll tell you what, I admire her restraint. The Republican field this year has been a little bit like a game of hot potato. It’s smart not to commit to a candidate too rashly. It would be embarrassing, after all, if she bet all her money on the Romney potato and the Santorum potato exploded into a slick, white mash. She has to show caution and resolve. She has to act Presidential. If she’s going to go around the country pretending to run for President for the rest of her life, after all, she may as well know the part. What I’m saying: hedge your bets, Sarah. Choose wisely!
The end.
(via)
0
Enjoy less money next year
– December 19, 2011
Remember last summer when Republicans learned during the debt ceiling debacle that even when they have the same approximate goal as Democrats do, they can still hold the Dems’ testicles to the grindstone by playing chicken on any given issue that the Dems want to pass even slightly more than they might?
Yeah, well, so does John Boehner.
From the LA Times:
House Speaker John Boehner said Monday that he expects the House to vote down the payroll tax deal brokered by Senate Republicans and Democrats, and push for further negotiations in the year-end battle over extending the tax holiday.
[...]
The Senate bill continues the lower tax rate for two months, giving Congress more time to haggle over how to pay for a longer-term holiday.
The extension of the tax break is President Obama’s top legislative priority and a key element of his jobs plan. House Republicans have long been cool to the idea, but now say they are committed to passing a one-year extension and no less.
In case the fucked-upped-ness of this whole situation is too blatant to parse (like sitting in the front row of a Transformers movie), let me break it down for you: both the donks and the ‘phants want to extend the payroll tax cut that ultimately puts more money into your pocket and mine. The difference is, the donks only want to do so for two months while they figure some shit out before extending it even further at a later date. The ‘phants, on the other trunk, want to extend for a minimum of a year at this time — otherwise, they’ll torpedo the whole deal. This is equivalent to you and I both wanting to buy some Oreos, except you only want to eat a couple of them now until you can call your mom and see what you’re having for dinner, whereas I wanna eat the whole package right this second — dinner be damned! — and am willing to burn down the convenient store if you don’t go along with me.
Or something like that. (There’s also probably a logical way to extend this metaphor by bringing a glass of milk into the equation, but I worry Republicans would just think I was supporting the secret homosexual agenda and get distracted or something.)
Update by Tom: No, the most fucked up thing about this is that the Democrats compromised their way down to a two month extension, which the Republicans pretended to be satisfied with, only to decide that their extension’s expiration came too close to the State of the Union (which would allow Obama to point to them in the speech as the people who wanted to raise your taxes), and so now they’re being jackasses and torpedoing the whole thing entirely because they’re craven opportunists who don’t give a shit about the country.
Our political process is a joke.
0
HAHAHAHA DONALD TRUMP SUX!1!!
– December 12, 2011
According to The Slatest:
Now Donald Trump might not have the [presidential] debate [he was all set to pompously and uselessly host] at all.
“I’ll have to look into it,” the celebrity [oft-bankrupted] real estate tycoon told the Fox Business Network after [oft-crazy] Michele Bachmann became the fifth candidate to decline an invitation to his Newsmax-sponsored Dec. 27 GOP debate…leaving only Gingrich and Santorum participating (if it happens at all).
First of all, I haven’t watched a single debate all year because that’s what we pay Tom for. However, you’d best believe that I would watch a two-person debate between Santorum and Gingrich as moderated by The Donald. Can you imagine how hilarious that would be? Of course, it’s not going to happen. Gingrich will officially drop out any day now because his campaign can’t afford to look any more ridiculous than it already does, and then Santorum will be left talking to himself — which he certainly should be used to by now. I’m just curious how Gingrich is going to justify dissing The Donald after meeting with him last week and calling him a “true American icon.” I mean, wouldn’t you want to be interviewed by a true American icon, regardless of what your fellow candidates thought of him? Or is there the slightest chance that Gingrich is just a populist whore and Trump’s arbitrary, ad-hoc populism inexplicably happens to resonate with some of N.G.’s weaker demos? I guess we’ll never know!!!
3
Liveblog of the 79th Republican Presidential Debate
– November 22, 2011
Topic: FOREIGN POLICY
I am going to regret this.
7:59 PM: Wolf Blitzer is lying to his audience on CNN.com. He’s saying that it hasn’t gone live yet, but it has. GOTCHA!
8:02 PM: This is a fucking joke. CNN takes its cues from, like, Survivor or some shit. Each candidate has his name read with inspiring music in the background, a little back story. (Oh, but they didn’t give back story for Huntsman or Santorum. Scandal!)
8:04 PM: Wolf Blitzer – “TWEET THIS SHIT, FACEBOOK THIS SHIT, GET THE WORD OUT, YO, THIS DEBATE’S GONNA BE ILL!”
8:06 PM: We do the national anthem before debates in this country. That’s how you know our candidates are serious.
8:09 PM: Rick Perry – “I’m married, btw. I know we’re talking about national security, but hey I’m asking for your vote.”
8:10 PM: Mitt Romney – “Yeah, I’m campaigning in the general already.”
8:11 PM: Herman Cain – “Yeah, something!”
8:11 PM: Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann – “My relatives were veterans, Happy Thanksgiving, peace, love, and rock and roll.”
8:12 PM: Why’s everyone talking about wives? Anyway, Huntsman’s going to trounce in this debate if he ever gets a question.
8:13 PM: Wolf Blitzer just called Ed Meese “honorable.”
8:13 PM: Ed Meese proceeds to ask leading question about how wonderful the Patriot Act is. Question goes to Newt Gingrich, who brings up “nuclear weapon” scenario in defending Patriot Act. “WE’LL BE IN DANGER FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES!” Quote. Jesus. Strengthen the Patriot Act? Jesus. “Ive spent years studying this stuff”??? Jesus. Newt Gingrich is a clown.
8:16 PM: Ron Paul gets applause, not votes.
8:17 PM: Bachmann is with the American people AND the Constitution, okay? Let’s not forget that, people!
8:18 PM: Bachmann – “Today we deal with wireless functions.” “The underwear bomber.” “We don’t give Miranda warnings to terrorists.” Applause.
8:20 PM: Perry wants to privatize the TSA to get rid of the unions. Yes.
8:22 PM: Perry calls Obama’s intelligence-gathering a failure, forgets that Obama, you know, got bin Laden.
8:23 PM: Santorum just said that Abe Lincoln ran all over civil rights? PLZ TELL ME I DID NOT HEAR THAT RIGHT. “Obviously Muslims would be someone you’d look at.” NO, I HEARD IT RIGHT, AND IT JUST GOT APPLAUSE.
8:25 PM: Let’s get our Muslim-bashing on with Herman Cain.
8:31 PM: “Pakistan as a nation is kind of like, too nuclear to fail.” – Michele Bachmann, the 21st Century’s incidental Mark Twain.
8:35 PM: Romney asserts that introducing Suharto to the Indonesians led them toward “modernity” and that we should do the same with Pakistan. Holy fucking shit, what a nutter.
8:38 PM: “We’ve already thrown a bunch of money down the hole that is the the Afghan war, might as well throw some more.” – Mitt Romney
8:41 PM: “We’re gonna kill people in your country whether you want us to or not.” -Newt Gingrich. Applause.
8:42 PM: I don’t even know what Rick Santorum is talking about. One thing’s for sure, though, Al Qaeda will be on our shores shortly.
8:45 PM: Went to the bathroom, came back. CNN apparently cannot persuade an advertiser to spend good money on the intermission.
8:47 PM: That was an awkward moment.
8:49 PM: How are we going to help Israel wage war on Iran, guys?
8:50 PM: And Ron Paul sinks his candidacy by rambling about Israel. Gets applause anyway. Paultards. *shakes head*
8:51 PM: Cain assures us that he knows that Iran is mountainous.
8:52 PM: I can’t believe I live in a country where this is the opposition party. Furthermore, I can’t believe it’s the most powerful country in the world.
8:53 PM: Why does Wolf Blitzer give Newt Gingrich deference with his, “I know you studied this”-es? Does Newt Gingrich take care of his dog during the week, or something? #justwondering
8:55 PM: You just want to throttle these people. What the fuck are you talking about the president has been steadfastly against energy independence? You dumbshits don’t even believe in science? Jesus gives us all we need. And holy fuck did Michele Bachmann get all Biblical right there.
8:56 PM: AND NOW, TO PROMOTE A VOICE THAT’S NEVER BEEN HEARD BEFORE… PAUL WOLFOWITZ!
9:00 PM: The answer to the question, btw, is, “FUCK YES WE CAN AFFORD FOREIGN AID, IT’S A RAINDROP IN THE OCEAN THAT IS OUR BUDGET AND IT HELPS PEOPLE,” not, “I’m not sure we can afford it, because our troops and our military,” or Ron Paul freaking out.
9:02 PM: Romney isn’t good on foreign policy, huh?
9:03 PM: Newt Gingrich – “DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!!!” Applause, of course. The crowd is Heritage Foundation and AEI people.
9:09 PM: Rick Perry’s been the Commander-in-Chief of the 20+ thousand National Guardsmen of Texas, y’all.
9:11 PM: If I could shoot myself in the face and wake up tomorrow and be fine — like, if that were a real possibility and there was no pain or anything — I would do that right now.
9:13 PM: And… the guy asking the question doesn’t know the difference between a deficit and a debt. Or, deliberately confuses them in the question knowing that no one will call him on it. Hmm.
9:15 PM: Strangely, in the context of balancing the budget, Republicans never mention revenues. Neither do moderators. It’s all cuts, never, “Hey, guys, we’re Congress, let’s just raise taxes on rich people and everything will be all hunky-dory!” Wolf Blitzer is hosting some pretty shameful shit. Maybe this is why nobody takes his network seriously?
9:24 PM: The Iranians run the Mexican drug cartels, Rick Perry? Wha??
9:25 PM: Ron Paul shows his true colors. End the war on drugs, and cancel the welfare state. This is your candidate, Paultards.
9:29 PM: More nonsense from Rick Santorum. Yawn.
9:33 PM: ILLEGALS! GAHHH!
9:34 PM: Isn’t illegal immigration a domestic issue anyway, guys? Can we not beat up on Mexicans just once in our national discourse? Just once? PLZZZ?
9:37 PM: Still on illegal immigrants. Newt Gingrich basically says that if you’ve gamed the system for 25 years, you’re cool to be here. If you’re a more recent illegal immigrant, we deport you. “Right guys?”
9:40 PM: We’re taking another break, apparently. I was hoping this would be over soon.
9:44 PM: Oh, wow. They gave David Addington a question, too. Cool!
9:46 PM: Rick Perry doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a revolution going on right now in Syria. At least, he didn’t mention it.
9:48 PM: Huntsman is auditioning for 2016.
9:50 PM: If this shit isn’t over in 10 minutes, well… I am.
9:51 PM: “Economy so strong! Military so strong! Very nice!” – Mitt Romney
9:54 PM: Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’ve spent two hours watching this shit.
9:56 PM: Something about Latin America being responsible for 9/11? I don’t know, I guess it’s time to “modernize” them or something.
9:57 PM: My God, these people are insane.
9:58 PM: That’s all. You’re welcome. You’ll excuse me if I turn off the post-game recap, won’t you?
0
Democrats write for the Wall Street Journal?
– November 22, 2011
I tend to develop a taste for Tevas whenever I try to publically analyze politics, but after reading yesterday’s WSJ opinion piece by two Democrats literally begging Obama not to run next year in favor of Hillary Clinton, I couldn’t resist taking another whack.
Patrick H. Caddell and Douglas E. Schoen begin with an appeal to the history books:
When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.
A couple things here: Truman (1945-1953) and Johnson (1963-1969) both ascended to the presidency after their predecessors died in office and thus spent a substantial amount of time as president before being voted in on their own merits during the subsequent elections.
Working in reverse chronological order, Johnson was inextricably linked with the most unpopular war in American history, which drowned out every other accomplishment on his CV and left him electorally fucked from the get-go. However, not only is there no single issue today that is perceived as negatively as the Vietnam War was (and still is) in Johnson’s day, Obama isn’t even the first entity most people blame for our current political albatross: a dead-fish economy.
According to the recent McClatchy-Marist Poll, conducted Nov. 8-10,
a nearly 2-1 majority of voters think that President Barack Obama inherited, rather than caused, today’s slumping economy, and more Americans trust him to create jobs than they do the Republicans in Congress.
Continuing along our reverse presidential timeline, thanks to FDR’s ill-advised and subsequently short-lived fourth term, Truman had basically already served two full terms before the 1952 elections. Yeah, he could have run again, but only on a technicality, and there’s no indication that he had any desire to do so anyway.
From Wikipedia:
In 1951, the U.S. ratified the 22nd Amendment, making a president ineligible to be elected for a third time, or to be elected for a second time after having served more than two years of a previous president’s term. The latter clause would have applied to Truman in 1952, except that a grandfather clause in the amendment explicitly excluded the current president from this provision.[197] However, Truman decided not to run for reelection.
So after their stirringly irrelevant introduction, Mssrs. Caddell and Schoen go on to suggest that Obama
should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president’s accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Excuse me while I WTF??? to myself for a few minutes over here. Maybe sentiments have changed since I last looked, but isn’t Hillary as polarizing a figure for Republicans as Obama is? Isn’t she married to the most reviled Democrat of the last 30 years? How can the authors possibly deem her more capable of governing than Obama when the only thing that seems to matter these days is not original ideas backed up by nonpartisan data and expert consensus, but merely which capital letter you carry next to your name? Are they really so naïve as to believe that one Democrat is more likely to be successful than any other in navigating the poisonous bipartisan swamp known as Congress?
Newsflash: from the point of view of most Republicans, it’s no longer specifically Obama whose policies are Singularly Evil and Destructive — it’s Democratic Philosophies in general. Look at the president’s actual list of pursuits and accomplishments in the White House. The dude is a classic weak-sauce centrist, yet in the hyperbolic rhetoric of the GOP, he has led us to the veritable verge of communims and/or socialism (depending on which histori-political analogy you’ve chosen to be ignorant of) in three short years as president.
To suggest that Hillary Clinton is the answer is to cop to an inexcusable political tonedeafness. Who cares if
President Obama is now neck and neck with a generic Republican challenger in the latest Real Clear Politics 2012 General Election Average (43.8%-43.%). Meanwhile, voters disapprove of the president’s performance 49%-41% in the most recent Gallup survey, and 63% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.
In case you’ve forgotten, Obama isn’t running against “generic Republican challenger” in the general election — he’s running against an actual Republican challenger, who at this point is guaranteed to be either someone so unexciting that he has come in second place in basically every poll ever taken (Romney), or someone who has actually finished first in a poll…but by law was only allowed to remain there for a couple of weeks until the next flavor of the month went on sale (in order: Trump, Bachman, Perry, Cain, and now Gingrich, with random calls for the never-even-running Barbour, Palin, and Christie thrown in for fun).
After some more nonsense about how Hillary somehow “has the ability to step above partisan politics, reach out to Republicans, change the dialogue, and break the gridlock in Washington” where other Democrats do not, the authors end with a melodramatic plea to the other leaders of the big “D”:
If President Obama is not willing to seize the moral high ground and step aside, then the two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, must urge the president not to seek re-election—for the good of the party and most of all for the good of the country. And they must present the only clear alternative—Hillary Clinton.
Right. Because nothing inspires bipartisan accord like a Clinton.
(For the record, in a normal political climate, I actually think Hillary would make a great president. I just think it’s a zero sum game switching out Obama for her in 2012. Alas and alack that my secret hope for a Clinton/Obama package in 2008 through 2016, followed by an Obama/Who cares? continuance from 2016-2024 never materialized.)
***
P.S. If the authors’ hopes magically come true next year, I’ve already got my Halloween costume all picked out:
Hilarity Clinton
