Trump Provokes, Paul Threatens, Holder Warns, Obama Secretly Smiles & Other GOP Morsels
mostly criminals, Occupy Wall Street protesters are always dirty. And women who
claim to have been sexually molested should kindly keep quiet. Welcome to
the wonderful world of the Republican Party. ~ DER SPIEGEL
Barack Obama, his back to the wall because of a recession he inherited, an opposition party happy to see ordinary Americans suffer, as well as problems of his own making, must believe in his heart of hearts that his chances of being re-elected improve by the day as the Republican presidential wannabes continue their Wiffle Bat war.
Donald Trump, who became road kill after the bottom dropped out of his campaign, is back with a vengeance. No, he’s not going to host the post-Christmas debate. That’s off the table, but he has begun another round of “I just might” still run if he is displeased with the other candidates.
“I must leave all of my options open because, above all else, we must make America great again!” Trump said in an exclamation point-laden statement that could have been written by a teenager with a Justin Bieber crush but did not allude to the obvious: He has become toxic because of his birther blatherings and repeatedly saying that he may be a spoil sport.
Joe Gandelman hit the ball out of the park the other day when he wrote that the conventional wisdom keeps failing because it feeds on itself.
This truth goes a long way in explaining why the pundits keep being blindsided in the game of music chairs being played by the Republican presidential field. Candidate A is on top when the music stops only to be replaced by Candidate B, who has come out of right field (literally and figuratively) to seize the lead in the polls.
The current CW is the prospect of a drawn-out battle for the nomination between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but that fails to take into account Ron Paul, who is surging in the polls as the Iowa caucuses approach.
In every current poll save one, Paul is been neck and neck for second place in Iowa behind Gingrich, and in one poll the former House speaker leads Paul by but a single point, 22 percent to 21.
Republican strategists have made no secret of using voter suppression tactics to keep down turnout, which in theory helps the party because of its shrinking base.
This prompted Attorney General Eric Holder to signal that the Justice Department will be aggressive in reviewing new voting laws that civil rights advocates say will dampen minority participation in 2012.
Declaring in a speech this week that protecting ballot access for all eligible voters “must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative,” Holder urged Americans to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters.”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 empowers the department’s civil rights division to object to election laws and practices on the grounds that they would disproportionately deter minority groups from voting — even if there is no evidence of discriminatory intent — and to go to court to block states from putting the laws in place.
What’s a poor Iowa evangelical to do? Two of the leading Republican candidates are a Mormon and a twice-divorced Catholic, which might lead one to believe that this is a welcome sign the evangelicals have lost their outsized influence in the Republican Party.
Not really. It’s more of a sign that evangelicals have matured as a voting bloc and without a Bible thumper like Mike Huckabee to rally around are willing to look the other way regarding a conservative candidate’s faith if they agree with him on policy.
“The bottom line is to beat Obama,” says Richard Land, a Southern Baptist Convention official.
“The fact that Romney and Gingrich are leading the pack of Republican presidential contenders . . . shows not the weakening of the movement but rather its diversity and the pragmatism that comes with maturity,” Land tells The New York Times. “These social conservatives are going to coalesce around the person they believe has the best chance of making Obama a one-term president.”
Besides which, he says, evangelicals believe Gingrich when he says he has gone to God for forgiveness for his serial infidelities.
Guess who has far and away the biggest campaign organization in Iowa? Barack Obama.
This year and next are not 2008, but the incumbent is raising buckets of money, has put together a formidable campaign operation in Iowa, where he has eight offices and more staffers on the ground than any Republican candidate, and already is campaigning in crucial swing states.
Obama’s strategy is set: A populist message like that he delivered in Kansas last week in which he vows the fight for the middle class and against income inequality. The expectation is that this will reverberate with independents and women, hopefully bring disillusioned Democrats back into the fold, and is precisely where the Republicans, no matter who the eventual nominee is, are the most vulnerable.
12 Responses to “Trump Provokes, Paul Threatens, Holder Warns, Obama Secretly Smiles & Other GOP Morsels”
Donald TRump on the View yesterday said he might run as an independent- because “we need to get tough,Barack Obama is too easy on Iran and I don,t understand how he can make sissy talk(my words) because I don,t remember the exact way that he put it but did catch the gist of it..for allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon and all he does is think of other ways to ‘enlighten’ Iran that they shouldn,t have a nuclear weapon.” Please! what a wash! I can see him as our commander-in-chief..NOT!
If things don,t go the way he likes
YOUR FIRED LOL! I am going to have fun with that one for sure if he runs…
It’s strange that liberals try and insist conservatives are stupid, – “think Africa is a country.”
when they have the grand high wizard of stupid idiots on their team, Al Gore, who failed 5 of 8 classes at divinity college, exams I could have passed, science for poets, I bet my life on it, if I were given the notes 20 minutes before it. Of course, a slip of the tongue is going to happen, now and then: I mean, campaigners probably get little sleep.
Look, liberals don’t have a monopoly on anything, but 100 years of miserable failure, mass atrocities, despair, no solutions for anything. It is all emotion and wishful thinking.
Even rational, moderate voices can agree with this. We need to get back to solid conservative fiscal policies to get people back to work, and the economy strong again like under the conservative, Ronald Reagan.
Rational minds: conservatives get pounced on mercilessly, and liberals can do anything without one critical comment
……Read…Al Gore is a phenomenal idiot
xannus– Thanks for letting me know that since I am a liberal, I must be totally irrational- as I have been supporting a party for half my lifetime that is responsible for all of the ills of society.
Way to be moderate and tolerant of views that don’t agree with your own.
Ya just gotta laugh at the Gore Derangement Syndrome. It was funny back in the day, and it still is. You want rational xannus? Here’s rational: All of America should be embarrassed by the GOP candidates. The rest of the world is laughing at us, and republicans don’t seem to have the first clue why.
When Bill Clinton freed Willie and deflowered a Jewish intern with a cigar, insisting all the time that he didn’t, I was behind him. Unfortunately for me the Republicans were right, character counts, because Willie was indeed freed and the world would never be the same again.
Now the, “character matters Republicans”, promote Newt, a TWICE divorced Catholic.
Being Catholic, how many hundreds of times has Newt had to say on Sunday; “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church”…? Divorce is not allowed in the Catholic Church, annulment is but Newt wasn’t annulled, he was divorced….twice. So I guess Newt does NOT believe in the Holy Catholic Church. What kind of character says he is a Catholic in public to get elected, but don’t even come close to following the REQUIRED Catholic doctrine? Did Newt get special dispensation from the Pope? I think not and Republicans have no honor at all if they don’t call Newt on it!
Well Xannus- we are honored to have your brilliant commentary here at TMV.
Don’t you think that Gore must be the luckiest person on the planet because despite being such a phenomenal idiot he managed to serve as a U.S. Senator, Vice President, came within a whisker of winning the Presidency, then went on to win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize?? Now since you are so much smarter than he is, I’d be interested in hearing about all of your achievements!
xannus=Lady Catherine De Bourgh
“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully.”
Vera – exactly.
I’m wondering which mass atrocities he’s refering to – there’ve been so many…
JS, said: “Here’s rational: All of America should be embarrassed by the GOP”
.I guess America should not have been “embarrassed” then or now of Dem candidates Edwards, Richardson and Sharpton. Hillary getting shot at-NOT also was interesting.
I was not embarrassed over that stuff, but I sure was embarrassed when a porno dollar bill of Bill and Monica was shown to me in Borneo.
BTW: does a guy like Rangle still doing all his stuff embarrass anyone. How about the guy Johnson with the freezer stuffed with money getting re-elected (not sure on that one)?
Duck, all tit for tat excuse making aside, I was very vocal about my digust with Edwards when his betrayal was made public, and I’ve brought it up often since, so no lecturing is required on my behalf. Forest for trees much?
Is vocal like embarrassed? And no “vocal” for Sharpton, Richardson, Rangle, Johnson?
Come on,you guys have a double standard and denial problem when you are embarrassed for Reps and not Dems, it is called BS.
JS, silence of the bulls……………..