Republican Hypocrisy category archive

Republicans are again talking about reaching out to minorities and women. Dick Polman explains why the effort will fail, like every similar effort since the beginning of the odious Southern Strategy. A nugget:

Over and over, rinse and repeat; Republicans persist in believing that pretty words and better communication will fix its systemic problem. What they never seem to realize is that minority voters don’t give a fig about words. For nearly 50 years, they have merely watched the GOP in action. Hence the disconnect.

Republicans. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Via Bob Cesca.

Via Bartcop.

Via Bartcop.

In a column about the promise of President Obama’s second term, Leonard Pitts, Jr., almost as an aside, skewers those who think President Obama must be more conciliatory.

Keep that in mind as people parse Barack Obama’s second inaugural address. Keep it in mind as they debate What It All Means that he has adopted a more combative stance toward Republicans in Congress, that he sang the praises of liberal values, that he apparently became the first president in history to take a stand for — or even mention — gay rights during an inaugural address. Keep it in mind as Republicans piously declaim Obama’s failure to seek common ground with them, conveniently forgetting that every time over the last four years the president reached a hand out to them, he drew back a nub.

The “both sides do it” “Obama is too partisan” crowd are nothing more than apologists for the Republican Party, fog machines obscuring the reality of Republican obstruction.

Via Balloon Juice.

If you can’t win elections the way they have been conducted for two centuries, under no circumstances consider whether maybe, just maybe, you may be on the wrong side of history.

Just change the rules.

The head of the Republican National Committee believes Wisconsin and other battleground states should change the way they allocate their Electoral College votes, but he said he is not inserting himself into how states decide to proceed.

“It’s not my decision that can come from the RNC, that’s for sure,” said Reince Priebus, the RNC’s chairman.

Gov. Scott Walker recently said he was intrigued by the notion of Wisconsin divvying up its electoral votes by congressional district, but that he had not made up his mind on whether to back the idea. If such a system had been in place in November, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney would have evenly split Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, rather than having all of them go to Obama.

In the Roanoke Times, Andy Schmookler points out the hypocrisy of the Republican stance on the debt ceiling.

In a news conference on Dec.13, House Speaker John Boehner insisted that the Republicans in Congress would insist on holding onto their ability to compel the U.S. to default on its credit, saying that Congress would never give up its “power of the purse.”

But the legitimate congressional powers of the purse are about spending, and this has nothing to do with that. The debt ceiling isn’t about spending. The money has already been spent. This is about paying one’s bills.

Paying one’s bills is what responsible people — and governments – do. The power that Boehner wants — and that the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is now also threatening to use – is the power to make the United States an irresponsible country.

Read the rest.

It has been my experience that persons who are not racists don’t do racist things. YMMV.

The end is kind of lame, but the beginning and middle are okay.

One reason that advertisers pay attention to “image” and “branding” is that image often trumps reality.

American car makers are still tagged with the reputation for poor quality that they so justly earned in the 1970s and 1980s, even though it is most emphatically no longer valid.

One of the images with the strongest staying power is that of the Republican Party’s somehow being full of responsible fiscals. Even the most cursory look at the last thirty years shows that it just ain’t so.

At Philly dot com, Cynthia Tucker wonders at the magickal mythological majesty of the “image” of that “brand.”

But while its brand is damaged, the GOP has maintained its mystique as the party of fiscal restraint. Shortly before the election, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that, by a margin of 51 to 43 percent, Americans believed Mitt Romney would do a better job on the deficit than President Obama. That’s in keeping with years of public belief that Republicans are fiscally conservative.

It’s flat-out wrong. It’s a convenient myth that Republicans have sold the taxpayers – clever marketing that covers a multitude of sins. There is nothing in the GOP’s record over the last two decades showing it to be sincere about balancing the budget, ferreting out waste, or reining in excessive government spending.

Image via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Driftglass reviews the history of Republican fiscal conservatism over the past 30 years.

It is most instructive.

Except when they are for it.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE is urging Congress to approve a $60.4 billion Hurricane Sandy aid package by the new year, while acknowledging Friday that New Jersey cannot afford to rebuild on its own.

“Nor would any state that suffered $37 billion in damages,” the governor said at a news conference in Newark on Friday.

You can’t have it both ways.

Unless you are a Republican.

It’s the AC/DC Party.

This one is particularly good.

Via Contradict Me.

Amongst all the brou-ha-ha about the phony phiscal cliff, Jay Bookman considers Republican mewling and caterwauling about mean old President Obama is not compromising* enough.

Correct me if I’m wrong — some will try to correct me though I’m right — but didn’t the Republicans start this all-out, scorched-earth permanent war thing? Wasn’t this whole thing their idea in the first place?

And now they beg for compromise?

It was almost exactly two years ago to the day that Speaker John Boehner made it clear that there would be no compromise in Washington. “I am not going to compromise my principles nor will I compromise the will of the American people,” he told Judy Woodruff of “60 Minutes”.

“You’re afraid of the word?” Woodruff asked.

“I reject the word,” the new speaker said.

____________________

*Compromise. n, fr the Republican. 1. Do what I want. 2. (there is no “2”).

Americans are safe from the disabled, thanks to the Republican Party.

Not. Nice. People.

Chauncey Devega skillfully dissects the bigotry of Republican attempts to gin up a controversy over Susan Rice and Benghazi. A nugget:

The Right’s hostility to Ambassador Susan Rice has been described by the Washington Post and others as motivated by white racism. Partisanship, conspiranoid thinking, and an effort to defrock President Obama are most certainly part of the Republicans’ hostility to a black woman who would dare to become Secretary of State. In an era where racism and conservatism are one and the same, Republicans cannot resist the urge and impulse to attack a black woman who serves in the Obama administration–even if race-baiting helped to lead to the downfall of their presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“Conspiranoid.” I like that.