Republican Hypocrisy category archive

Daniel Ruth, in discussing the larger question of Florida’s considering on-line voter registration, sums up the rationale for Republican gut-out-the-vote efforts.

Here’s the troubling thing about elections. When you offer the body politic the chance to cast a ballot, there is always the inherent risk people will also avail themselves of the opportunity to actually take the trouble to vote. And let’s face it, you can take this democracy drivel only so far.

(snip)

Scott is not a governor particularly enamored of the vagaries of elections. After all, one might lose. Why make it easier for folks to decide how they want to be governed?

Do read the rest. Ruth’s wordsmithing is marvelous.

Via Kos.

George Diaz thinks that Mario Rubio is living in the past.

Marco Rubio is a political rock star among conservatives. The fan base is smitten by a lot of things — savvy stage presence, a story that resonates with the power of the American Dream, and a fresh young face among the usual GOP contenders not named Bush.

But here’s the hiccup: He is a modern-day John Kennedy, stuck in archaic, Joe McCarthy politics.

Fear the commies. Fear the homos. Quash civil rights.

He proceeds to rip Rubio apart for his flip-flopping hypocrisy on immigration.

I would disagree with the comparison to John Kennedy; whatever his faults, Kennedy had some integrity.

Richard Nixon might be a better analogy: all the grift all the time.

Via Job’s Anger.

In Republican World, a law that allows persons to discriminate is not about discrimination, because pretzels.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

PoliticalProf has a question.

Paul Krugman looks for a reason for the fanciful Republican budget proposals. A snippet (emphasis added):

One answer you sometimes hear is that what Republicans really believe is that tax cuts for the rich would generate a huge boom and a surge in revenue, but they’re afraid the public won’t find such claims credible. So magic asterisks are really stand-ins for their belief in the magic of supply-side economics, a belief that remains intact even though proponents in that doctrine have been wrong about everything for decades.

But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.

Ted Cruz doubles–nay, triples, perhaps quadruples and quintuples–down.

Q. What side of his mouth does Ted Cruz talk out of?

Dick Polman explains, as he takes sardonic delight in Ted Cruz’s signing up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. A snippet.

By the way, when Cruz was asked on CNN how he squared his hate-Obamacare mantra with his decision to buy from Obamacare, he said this: “I believe we should follow the text of every law, even (a) law I disagree with.” Which is hilarious, because back in the fall of ’13, when conservative groups were actively working to dissuade young people from enrolling in Obamacare – urging them to defy the law and pay the fine for noncompliance – I don’t ever recall Ted Cruz saying that the tactic was wrong. I don’t ever recall him taking the high road and urging Americans to follow the text of the law.

Bob Cesca tears into the big pile of IOKIYAR in Ted Cruz’s backpack. Here’s a sample.

Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1970 to an American mother and a foreign (Cuban) father. Sound familiar? The only difference between the presidency-related birth circumstances of President Obama and Ted Cruz is that Obama was born in the United States and Cruz wasn’t. Of course this doesn’t matter because Obama is black with a funny-sounding “exotic” name and Cruz is a white guy named “Ted,” so it’ll be assumed that Cruz is totally a natural born citizen while Obama isn’t. That seems fair. Legally-speaking, however, Cruz is perfectly eligible to be president based on the citizenship status of his mother. So can Obama, especially given how he was born in Hawaii. But don’t expect a (fake) investigation by Donald Trump or any mass freakouts by a legion of conspiracy theorists over Cruz’s eligibility to be president because, again, he’s a white Republican. Everything’s okay if you’re a white Republican.

Read the rest. It’s a sociological study in Republican hypocrisy.

In an article syndicated in the Bangor Daily News, Dana Milbank notes the Republican Party’s novel and creative celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. A snippet:

It was altogether fitting that Republicans rolled out their budget during a festival of inebriation in honor of the man who magically — and apocryphally — banished snakes from Ireland. What Republicans have done with their budget is no less fantastic: They have employed lucky charms and mystical pots of gold to make them appear more sober about balancing the budget than they actually are.

“We do not rely on gimmicks or creative accounting tricks to balance our budget,” the House Republicans say in the introduction to their fiscal 2016 budget.

True, the budget does not rely on gimmicks. The budget is a gimmick.

Via the Bob and Chez Show Blog.

Jeb “Oh God Please Not Another” Bush edition.

No self-awareness. No self-awareness whatsoever.

Afterthought:

I have been exchanging emails with my brother about the bogus Hillary Clinton email server brouhaha.* Neither of us are Hillary fans. As I told my brother, I don’t like Hillary, but I don’t think she is evil. Annoying, but not evil.

The Republican Party, though, is a vile and loathsome thing, a gibbering Lovecraftian monster that makes Nyarlothotep look like a cuddely little teddy bear.

Ask me nicely, I’ll tell you what I really think.

_________________

*This came up at my recent LUG meeting and everyone yawned, because there is no there there. One of the participants pointed out, “They are Blackberry people,” and having your own little Blackberry email server is a Blackberry thing.

I know that no one is listening, but the only lesson of the “homebrew email server” fuss is that the media is clueless about how the internet works.