Political Theatre category archive

Ed Quillen, admitted Democrat, writes in the Denver Post of a recent visit from his “favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really Runs America.”

A snippet. Follow the link for the full apparition:

“Our powers are limited,” Ziegler explained. “We did manage to turn Romney into what he is now from what he had been, a pro-choice supporter of gay-rights and socialized medicine, somebody you might have voted for. But we can’t make Newt consistently sound sane.”

“That would be a challenge,” I consoled.

Ziegler snorted agreement. “He’ll talk about things that people care about, like jobs and houses. Then he’ll babble about making a state out of a lunar colony. And to think we used to call Jerry Brown ‘Governor Moonbeam.'”

Warning: Language, episodic bad taste.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Via PoliticalProf.

TPM Muckraker:

She may, famously, not be a witch, but here’s a bit of money magic from former Delaware Republican Senate candidate and recent Mitt Romney endorser Christine O’Donnell: her political campaign gave $142,000 to her super PAC, which proceeded to buy copies of her book.

I guess somebody had to buy that turkey.

Addendum, the Next Day:

Perhaps shoring up her almost-non-existent book sales wasn’t the best use for the funds. My ex-local rag reports:

O’Donnell has burned through most of the $424,000 in campaign donations remaining from the record-setting $7.4 million she raised in her failed 2010 U.S. Senate campaign.

She has nearly exhausted her leftover funds, has reportedly had lackluster book sales and is being sued by a longtime supporter who claims she’s trying to stiff him out of pay for political consulting and legal research. Her political action committee, ChristinePAC, and Senate campaign had a combined $36,100 left in the bank at the end of 2011, according to reports filed last week.

At this rate, she’ll have to look for honest work.

The story does point out that the her PAC purchased the book at the “non-royalty” rate.

Are Republican candidates spreading the stupid?

Heh.

Congressional Republicans have the producer of Gasland arrested.

Will Bunch reports.

Classy.

Click for a larger image.

Via BartBlog.

Steven M. predicts that, if Mitt the Flip does indeed lock down the Republican nomination for president, the punditocracy will convince itself that the Republican Party has beaten back the crazy and returned to being the party of Ev Dirksen and Nelson Rockefeller.*

“Look at what’s going in the states,” counsels Steven M. citing several examples, “and don’t buy the myth of a mellower GOP.”

. . .the press never wants to acknowledge the party’s extremism. The press wants to say that the party is fine, our two-party system is fine, and anything intemperate that Republicans have ever done is anomalous, and unrepresentative of the fine folks all insider journalists meet at cocktail parties.

__________________

*The evidence is that Mitt wears nice suits, doesn’t shout, and looks good in group photos

George Monbiot, writing at the Guardian, dissects the arrogant wantonness of raining death from the skies. A nugget:

. . . it must also be true that the easier and less risky a deployment is, the more likely it is to happen.

This danger is acknowledged in a remarkably candid assessment published by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which also deploys drones, and has also used them to kill civilians. It maintains that the undeclared air war in Pakistan and Yemen “is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available”.

Aside:

I do think that drawing a parallel between President George the Worst and President Obama, as he does in an early paragraph, is an example of rhetoric outdistancing evidence–not that I would ever fall into that trap–but the author’s larger point stands.
/strong

Jay Bookman puts his tongue firmly in his cheek to theorize about why all the Newt-Hate:

Bob Dole, John McCain, Ann Coulter, Elliott Abrams, Tom DeLay, Charles Krauthammer … they’re all coming out with harsh and in some cases bitter attacks against Newt Gingrich.

I can only think of one explanation: They’re all liberals who are trying to sabotage the former speaker because they’re terrified at what Gingrich would do to President Obama in a debate. And they’re doing everything they can to prevent that calamity.

Daniel Ruth reports on a Florida debate. A nugget:

Do you ever get the feeling this whole nominating process is about as dignified as Steven Tyler doing his waterboarding version of the national anthem? It’s not that the candidates may advocate positions I may not agree with. That’s part of the political process. What irks me is that these pols think we’re all a bunch of gullible half-wits.

Does anyone honestly believe Freddie Mac paid Newt Gingrich $1.6 million to provide history lessons?

More at the link. It gets better.

Thoreau:

The Navy, in collaboration with Northrop Grumman, is testing a drone that will fly and make decisions without a pilot. There’s nothing that could possibly go wrong with this scenario.

So far they insist that the drone will not make lethal decisions on its own, but you know it’s only a matter of time. Am I the only one who thinks that every single Northrop employee should be forced to watch all of the Terminator movies several times over?

The link to the L. A. Times news story is at Thoreau’s place.

More nutty Republican theatre:

Via Brendan.

See Delaware Liberal for details on Arizona’s latest move in its attempt to become the Alabama of the Southwest.

In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jay Bookman considers Newt the Gingrinch’s performance in the most recent episode of Survivor: Wingnut Studio Republican media circus debate. A snippet.

At heart, Gingrich is a bully who backs down when confronted. He likes to challenge members of the media in public, safe in the knowledge that their profession does not allow them to return fire. He is well-skilled at creating and then dismantling strawmen. And he is supremely confident when he senses that he has succeeded in intimidating his target.

But when the critical moment comes, he deflates. As speaker, he shrunk from Bill Clinton, to the point that his aides and lieutenants didn’t want to have them in the same room lest a passive Gingrich agree to too much. In these debates, once Romney decided to fight back aggressively, Newt has repeatedly retreated. In the previous debate, he was left speechless and flustered by a pressing Romney, and apparently he still hasn’t recovered his bluster.