Political Theatre category archive

James Carville, via the Quotemaster:

Whenever I hear a campaign talk about a need to energize the base, that’s a campaign that’s going down the toilet. It’s a pretty good indication that they’re not eating up any territory, they can’t get anybody in the center to support them, they’re getting shelled back into their own bunker.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Dick Polman thinks that Little Ricky’s campaign, now “suspended” (whatever that means), has severely damaged Mitt the Flip:

So the Santorum Effect continues. Having forced Romney to waste big bucks on an intramural fight, at a time when Romney would have greatly preferred to spend that money on autumn organizational infrastructure; and having exposed Romney’s political weakness (it took Mitt four months and tens of millions of dollars to beat a cash-strapped guy in a sweater vest), Santorum is now the gold standard for conservatism. The GOP base will judge Romney in accordance with that standard.

And Santorum will be with us again. Having made the case to the right that Romney is phony, he will soon do the opposite and seek to rally the base to Romney – to prove his loyalty to the party, of course, because he wants to nurture his prospects for 2016 (if Romney loses) or 2020 (if Romney wins). Ah, politics and its endless ironic iterations.

Meanwhile, Field wonders what Mitt has to do to be relabeled from flipper to liar. A snippet:

The man has been lying from day one. In fact, one could argue that his entire campaign in the republican primary has been built on a lie. (Etch A Sketch anyone?)

“During a debate in November, when moderator Wolf Blitzer introduced himself by saying that “Wolf” is really his first name, Romney greeted the audience by saying, “I’m Mitt Romney, and yes, Wolf, that’s also my first name.” In fact, Willard is his first name. It’s a lie notable for being so mundane: Why would someone fudge their name? It’s almost as if he can’t control himself.”

I don’t think he can.

PoliticalProf quotes Bill from Portland Maine:

The Supreme Court says corporations are people. The Supreme Court also says that people can be strip-searched for any reason whatsoever. Therefore, corporations can now be strip-searched for any reason whatsoever. Let’s start with . . . how ‘bout Koch Industries.

Robert Greenwald has already started the examination:

As April 15 approaches, don’t you want to duck your taxes with the skill of a Wall Street bankster?

Call Tax Masters.

Next year, though, why not do what Mitt Romney does and send your money on vacation to the Cayman Islands? Yes, your humble peasant money can go rub shoulders with 30 million of Romney’s dollars in a chi-chi tropical haven for money that belongs to people who believe, like the late Leona Helmsley, that “Only the little people pay taxes.”

From Contradict Me: Why writers need editors.

Shaun Mullen describes how Mitt the Flip is perfect of the opposites’ game with President Obama. A nugget:

Although he stands a better chance of beating Barack Obama than his Republican clown car compatriots, Mitt Romney is in a key respect the perfect challenger for the president because he represents all that is wrong — and then some — about the distribution of wealth in America at a time when that has belatedly become a pungent societal issue.

Romney, who is worth $250 million give or take a few million, has been squirrely about being a card-carrying member of the 1 percent of the 1 percent from the outset of the 2012 campaign . . . .

Read the rest.

The legal concept of “standing” refers to whether someone has enough of a stake in a situation to file a tort.

At Philly dot com, Elmer Smith looks at a different standing: who has standing to “stand his ground”:

But there is a race angle in this story (the Trayvon Martin case–ed.). I can’t help wondering which way the wheels of justice would be turning if Martin had fired first. Where do you think he would be now if they had wrestled over the gun and Zimmerman had been killed in the struggle?

Would the most permissive self-defense law in America have been wide enough to cover an unarmed 17-year-old black kid in a hoodie who was walking through a predominantly white neighborhood at night?

Think on that, then try to convince yourself that race had no part in this killing or in the police reaction to it.

Dick Polman describes the Republican Establishment’s (such as it is) emerging strategy to make Little Ricky Santorum go away and stop bothering them:

But these shots across Santorum’s bow are symptomatic of a much broader message, which goes something like this:

“Yo, Santorum. The party is sick and tired of all this infighting. If you keep wasting Romney’s time and money, if you keep pulling him to the right, if you compel him to spend big money on Pennsylvania primary ads in April, and if you drag him down to Texas in May, in the end he’s going to have a tougher time beating Obama. So stop being a brat. If you want to have any future in this party, if you want to nurture any realistic dreams about getting nominated in 2016 or beyond, and, in fact, if you want to avoid losing your home-state primary and not be humiliated by Pennsylvania voters for the second time in six years, then knock it off. Pull the plug already.”

Click to read the rest.

Thom discusses Paul Ryan’s visions of a Randian paradise based on selfishness. Watch the first two minutes; it will tell you all you need to know about the contemporary Republican Party and its Libertarian fellow travelers.

Click to follow the proceedings of the Republican National Committee as it lays out its 2012 strategy.

Know what to expect in the campaign season.

Andrew Trees comments on justices run amok. A nugget:

Here are a few examples of the “offenses” that led to strip-searches in recent years: violating a leash law, driving without a license, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell. And don’t think that your upstanding reputation will protect you. A nun was strip-searched after an arrest for trespassing during an anti-war demonstration. Presumably, the police were trying to locate that dangerous weapon that goes under the street name “crucifix.” It gets better — the court’s decision explicitly states that there does not have to be a reasonable suspicion that the arrested person has any contraband secreted on his or her person.

In addition to giving police unlimited rights to strip-search for contraband, the Supreme Court had given them unlimited rights to strip-search to humiliate, abuse, and debase prisoners.

Not that any police officer would ever do such a thing.

Dick Polman discusses the Republican presidential nomination contest with long-time Republican activist Rich Galen. Mr. Galen seems to despair of the course of his party.

His comments on Newt the Gingrinch are particularly interesting:

By the way, we had to ask: What’s up with Newt? Why does your old boss insist on staying in the Republican race long past his sell-by date? Could you provide some character clues that would help explain this?

Galen surely did: “Newt’s world has always been inside his head. He’d have 15 ideas a day (back when Galen worked for him), and at least one would be deadly. It was my job to sort out the deadly one…He has the attention span of a five-year-old…He truly believes that if Romney doesn’t get the 1144 delegates (by convention time), he’ll have one last chance to get the delegates to chant his name.”

But how can Newt possibly believe that?

Because, as Galen put it, Newt operates within “a reality-distortion field….And he’s 68 years old, so what else is he going to do with his time? Go to the zoo?”

Follow the link for the rest.

J. M. Ashby evaluates the spin.

When you turn from the rhetoric of Republicans to their actions, it is difficult not to wonder whether one of their core values is kicking people when they are down.

KHELI Muhammad was trying to schedule a routine pediatrician’s appointment last summer when she discovered that her 2-year-old son, who has a congenital heart disorder, had been kicked off the Medicaid rolls.

The 30-year-old mother of two boys was stunned.

“It is written in stone that he’s covered,” Muhammad said of Samad, who qualifies for Medicaid based on his serious medical condition, not the family’s income level. “He’s pacemaker-dependent . . . [H]is heart will not beat without a pacemaker.”

But the heartbeat of the fragile little Samad was clearly not a priority for welfare officials, who informed Muhammad that she had failed to renew his benefits – even though she said she had not received renewal paperwork in the mail – and that she’d have to reapply.

Dick Polman wonders at the polls regarding Mitt the Flip’s relative unpopularity amongst women voters and wonders from whence comes the unpopularity.

He concludes that Republicans just can’t help themselves. A nugget:

But the problem goes far beyond Romney. He’s likely taking a big hit in the gender polls for the party’s female-unfriendly efforts across the map. Red-state legislatures have been pushing for measures that would curb women’s power over their own bodies. Republican spinners insist these days that the Democrats have “manufactured” the notion of a GOP war on women, but that’s an odd assertion in light of the fact that Republican lawmakers have been targeting abortion and contraception in (among other states) Virginia, Texas, Florida, Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kentucky, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio, Missouri, and Pennsylvania.

Via BartBlog.

No doubt absolutely nothing can go wrong with this:

American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling.

The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the US government’s principal nuclear research and development agency – and defence contractor Northrop Grumman, were designed to increase flying time “from days to months” while making more power available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia.