Anti-Islam rhetoric has replaced anti-communism as the right wing's ideological underpinning.
Not all Republicans, however, have embraced the anti-Islam rhetoric that has colored the GOP primary. Last week, for example, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, seen as a leading contender for president in either 2012 or 2016, offered a forceful and widely praised defense of a Muslim judge, Sohail Mohammed, whom he had appointed to a state judicial post.“The folks who criticize my appointment of Sohail Mohammed are ignorant,” Christie said. “They’re criticizing him because he’s a Muslim-American.” Of the anti-Shariah movement, Christie added: “This Shariah law business is crap. It’s just crazy. And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”
This is the Republican party's savior for 2012? How many right wingers are going to accept such a point of view? Well, it turns out even Governor Perry has Muslim friends.
as Salon has reported, Perry has also cultivated an intimate friendship with the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of a sect of Shia Muslims known as the Ismailis. The relationship has produced not only mutual praise but a pair of Islam-friendly programs in Texas, such as an initiative to train high school teachers in Muslim history and culture.
Whoa, there. Has the right wing heard of this?
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Unattached, and available
Now that Texan Perry has been deflated (even Republican right-wing pundits are criticizing him), and that Bachman's standing is back to being just a fringe figure, Republicans with billions are seeking out a figure to carry forth their dreams of less government, lower taxes, discredited liberals and defanged unions: a veritable conservative utopia. Their new sweetheart is governor Christie of New Jersey. A tough-talking, abrasive, yet attractive Republican, this governor embodies the latest hopes of those who want a credible challenger to president Obama.
They are rich. They are unattached. They are looking for a little excitement. Meet the Draft Christie committee, a small but influential group of Republican-leaning donors and activists, many based in New York, united by a shared desire to see Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey run for president. There is Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire Home Depot founder who is perhaps Mr. Christie’s most fervent booster; Paul E. Singer, the publicity-shy hedge fund magnate and Republican activist who is among the most-sought-after Republican donors in the country; and David H. Koch, the industrialist, Tea Party benefactor and, according to Forbes, the richest man in New York. Charles R. Schwab, the personal investment guru, is also among those who have shown interest in seeing a Christie presidential bid, according to published reports and people familiar with the discussions, as is the financier Stanley F. Druckenmiller. So are the hedge fund managers David Tepper and Daniel S. Loeb, a onetime supporter of President Obama. In recent months, Christie enthusiasts have lighted up the phone lines between Manhattan and Trenton trying to persuade the governor to enter the Republican field amid growing concern about the current contenders.
Now, when financiers are willing to put their money where their ideology is, somehow that does not equal when unions do the same; unions are called special interest, are charged with holding the Democratic party hostage to their ideology, and bad for capitalism. When billionaires do it, what is it called?
Whatever they call it, these men simply do not like Mitt Romney. Why that is, I do not particularly care, but I do wonder.
Buzz about Mr. Christie’s presidential prospects intensified in recent days after a previously unknown group, the Committee for Our Children’s Future, unveiled a $1.5 million television advertising campaign in New Jersey promoting Mr. Christie’s accomplishments. “Runaway spending. Record debt. Gridlocked government. Washington is backwards,” the script reads. “But Chris Christie, with bipartisan support, is taking New Jersey in another direction.” The group was formed by Christie friends dating back to his undergraduate days at the University of Delaware. A Republican affiliated with the group, who agreed to speak in detail about its origins in return for anonymity, said it was formed as a way to defend against labor union attacks in New Jersey.
They do it anonymously, hiding behind their millions and pseudo-patriotic names, for they know that if the rabble knew that it is billionaires who owns industries in the Midwest but live in New York who finance the teabags, they might not like it quite so much as they do when it is a committee for our children's future that does it.
“I was at a conference this week with a lot of high-powered people,” said Bradford M. Freeman, who led California fund-raising for George W. Bush. “People just said he was fantastic. Those that know him or have heard him speak are very enthusiastic. He’s articulate, he’s done a good job in New Jersey, he has good charisma.”
High-powered people are not a special interest, of course. And what they like about his record is that he is anti-union.
Many have ties to the Manhattan Institute, an incubator of the brand of urban conservatism — heavy on criticism of public employee unions and runaway state budgets — to which Mr. Christie is the country’s most visible Republican heir.
They hate unions. That is a common theme. Unions are evil. Plutocrats are patriotic. But, perhaps there is another side of the issue to consider as accurate.
'Fiscal conservative’ masks anti-tax agenda, writes Darrell Delamaide.
They are rich. They are unattached. They are looking for a little excitement. Meet the Draft Christie committee, a small but influential group of Republican-leaning donors and activists, many based in New York, united by a shared desire to see Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey run for president. There is Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire Home Depot founder who is perhaps Mr. Christie’s most fervent booster; Paul E. Singer, the publicity-shy hedge fund magnate and Republican activist who is among the most-sought-after Republican donors in the country; and David H. Koch, the industrialist, Tea Party benefactor and, according to Forbes, the richest man in New York. Charles R. Schwab, the personal investment guru, is also among those who have shown interest in seeing a Christie presidential bid, according to published reports and people familiar with the discussions, as is the financier Stanley F. Druckenmiller. So are the hedge fund managers David Tepper and Daniel S. Loeb, a onetime supporter of President Obama. In recent months, Christie enthusiasts have lighted up the phone lines between Manhattan and Trenton trying to persuade the governor to enter the Republican field amid growing concern about the current contenders.
Now, when financiers are willing to put their money where their ideology is, somehow that does not equal when unions do the same; unions are called special interest, are charged with holding the Democratic party hostage to their ideology, and bad for capitalism. When billionaires do it, what is it called?
Whatever they call it, these men simply do not like Mitt Romney. Why that is, I do not particularly care, but I do wonder.
Buzz about Mr. Christie’s presidential prospects intensified in recent days after a previously unknown group, the Committee for Our Children’s Future, unveiled a $1.5 million television advertising campaign in New Jersey promoting Mr. Christie’s accomplishments. “Runaway spending. Record debt. Gridlocked government. Washington is backwards,” the script reads. “But Chris Christie, with bipartisan support, is taking New Jersey in another direction.” The group was formed by Christie friends dating back to his undergraduate days at the University of Delaware. A Republican affiliated with the group, who agreed to speak in detail about its origins in return for anonymity, said it was formed as a way to defend against labor union attacks in New Jersey.
They do it anonymously, hiding behind their millions and pseudo-patriotic names, for they know that if the rabble knew that it is billionaires who owns industries in the Midwest but live in New York who finance the teabags, they might not like it quite so much as they do when it is a committee for our children's future that does it.
“I was at a conference this week with a lot of high-powered people,” said Bradford M. Freeman, who led California fund-raising for George W. Bush. “People just said he was fantastic. Those that know him or have heard him speak are very enthusiastic. He’s articulate, he’s done a good job in New Jersey, he has good charisma.”
High-powered people are not a special interest, of course. And what they like about his record is that he is anti-union.
Many have ties to the Manhattan Institute, an incubator of the brand of urban conservatism — heavy on criticism of public employee unions and runaway state budgets — to which Mr. Christie is the country’s most visible Republican heir.
They hate unions. That is a common theme. Unions are evil. Plutocrats are patriotic. But, perhaps there is another side of the issue to consider as accurate.
'Fiscal conservative’ masks anti-tax agenda, writes Darrell Delamaide.
David and Charles Koch, owners of the privately held energy firm Koch Enterprises, have long since been revealed as the main funders of the “grassroots” Tea Party movement, which cloaks an anti-tax agenda in a small-government Libertarian camouflage. Mitt Romney’s biggest liability as a candidate, aside from the fact that he may be too bland and too fake to defeat Barack Obama, is that he’s not sufficiently on board with this anti-tax agenda.
Perhaps Romney knows that the anti-tax agenda is a recipe for disaster; Ronald Reagan found it. But these plutocrats and their lackeys want to ignore historical truths.
Pundits have tried to figure out how people who say they want to reduce deficits can claim, against all notions of financial physics, that they can do so by lowering taxes. That’s because they aren’t really interested in reducing the deficit. They are just interested in lowering taxes.
They want someone who will do their bidding, get government out of their way, and maybe even turn the clock back a century.
The Koch brothers could have written the speech Christie gave Tuesday night at the Reagan library in California. Interspersed with barbs about President Barack Obama’s lack of leadership, Christie recited the familiar litany of the anti-taxers — unleash our entrepreneurial energies, favor accomplishment instead of entitlement, remove the “uncertainties” of the tax code, and so on and so on. Beneath all the apple-pie-and-motherhood talk of American exceptionalism and the greatness of Ronald Reagan, the key line of Christie’s speech was the attack on Obama for suggesting that a return to the modest Clinton-era tax rates would be a fair burden-sharing in restoring fiscal balance.
Bush and Cheney sent soldiers to war without adequate equipment, to accomplish abstract ideological goals and feed billions of dollars to the military-industrial complex, created an economic imbalance that nearly sent the nation into an economic depression, the standard of living of the middle class has stagnated for a decade, more than 40 million people are below the poverty line (itself a laughably inadequate sum), and what these people want is yet more money for themselves.
It would be hard to imagine a better way to mobilize the Democratic base than to nominate Christie and pair him with, say, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as a vice presidential candidate to create the Tea Party dream ticket. Money counts for a lot in our battered democracy, but not yet everything.
Perhaps.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Warren announces candidacy
In fact, on issues of middle-class quality of life, she’s miles ahead of Obama, whose acquaintance with economic principles is, let’s say, minimal and whose grasp of the problems facing the middle class is at best abstract. More to the point, Obama has done virtually nothing to fulfill his promise about reining in the influence of lobbyists in the national capital.
Many promises broken, many disappointments delivered.
For the coming year, at least, Warren has a new platform to preach her message of restoring the middle class, and it’s one this country desperately needs to hear.
Someone has to start making sense. But the same old pap won't cut it.
Many promises broken, many disappointments delivered.
For the coming year, at least, Warren has a new platform to preach her message of restoring the middle class, and it’s one this country desperately needs to hear.
Someone has to start making sense. But the same old pap won't cut it.
GOP divided over tea party movement
That not all Republicans support the right wing ideology of the teabags is no surprise, but how many do believe in the ideology is surprising.
"Demographically, the tea party movement seems to hearken back to the 'angry white men' who were credited with the GOP's upset victory in the 1994 midterm elections," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Ideologically, it effectively boils down to the century-old contest between the conservative and moderate wings of the party." Full results (pdf)
That division is more than a century old; even he revolutionary generation had it.
According to the survey, roughly half (49 percent) of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support the tea party movement or are active members, with roughly half (51 percent) saying that they have no feelings one way or another about the tea party or that they oppose the movement.
Almost half, nearly half, of Republicans are leaning right, and that implies hard-line views: the "science" issue is also a strong divider. Nearly six in ten tea party Republicans say that global warming is not a proven fact. Most non-tea party Republicans disagree. Six in ten tea party Republicans say that evolution is wrong. Non-tea party Republicans are split on evolution. Six in ten tea party Republicans say the Department of Education should be abolished, but only one in five of their GOP counterparts holds that same view.
Teabags tend to be white males: The poll indicates that demographically, tea party Republicans are more likely to be male, older, and college educated, with non-tea party Republicans more likely to be younger, less educated, female, and less likely to say they are born-again or evangelical. Both groups are predominantly white.
College graduates want to see the Education Department abolished. They are very angry, and they have targets for their anger.
Tea party Republicans are roughly twice as likely to say that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and roughly half as likely to support gay marriage. Tea party Republicans are also roughly twice as likely to believe that the Social Security system should be replaced, and although most Republicans on either side disagree with the assertion that Social Security is a lie and a failure, tea party GOPers are much more likely to embrace that view.
Doctrinaire ideologues, yet Eight in ten tea party Republicans say that they would prefer a candidate who can beat Obama over one who agrees with them on top issues, so ideological purity may take a back seat to pragmatic politics in 2012 even if the GOP nominee is not a tea party favorite.
So if a moderate (well, in terms of the Republicans party these days) wins the nomination, the party will unite behind him. That will allow the nominee to tack to the center, appeal to independents, and ... win?
"Demographically, the tea party movement seems to hearken back to the 'angry white men' who were credited with the GOP's upset victory in the 1994 midterm elections," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Ideologically, it effectively boils down to the century-old contest between the conservative and moderate wings of the party." Full results (pdf)
That division is more than a century old; even he revolutionary generation had it.
According to the survey, roughly half (49 percent) of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support the tea party movement or are active members, with roughly half (51 percent) saying that they have no feelings one way or another about the tea party or that they oppose the movement.
Almost half, nearly half, of Republicans are leaning right, and that implies hard-line views: the "science" issue is also a strong divider. Nearly six in ten tea party Republicans say that global warming is not a proven fact. Most non-tea party Republicans disagree. Six in ten tea party Republicans say that evolution is wrong. Non-tea party Republicans are split on evolution. Six in ten tea party Republicans say the Department of Education should be abolished, but only one in five of their GOP counterparts holds that same view.
Teabags tend to be white males: The poll indicates that demographically, tea party Republicans are more likely to be male, older, and college educated, with non-tea party Republicans more likely to be younger, less educated, female, and less likely to say they are born-again or evangelical. Both groups are predominantly white.
College graduates want to see the Education Department abolished. They are very angry, and they have targets for their anger.
Tea party Republicans are roughly twice as likely to say that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and roughly half as likely to support gay marriage. Tea party Republicans are also roughly twice as likely to believe that the Social Security system should be replaced, and although most Republicans on either side disagree with the assertion that Social Security is a lie and a failure, tea party GOPers are much more likely to embrace that view.
Doctrinaire ideologues, yet Eight in ten tea party Republicans say that they would prefer a candidate who can beat Obama over one who agrees with them on top issues, so ideological purity may take a back seat to pragmatic politics in 2012 even if the GOP nominee is not a tea party favorite.
So if a moderate (well, in terms of the Republicans party these days) wins the nomination, the party will unite behind him. That will allow the nominee to tack to the center, appeal to independents, and ... win?
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