Tag Archives: GOP

The desperate candidates – and their party

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gopPresDebateWhen did the Republican presidential primary become a Bravo Reality TV series – “the Desperate Candidates?”

We have trash talk from a bombastic billionaire developer, Donald Trump, putting down the “Republican Establishment,” and those, who he convincingly says, are his “establishment” competitors.

In the latest round of churlish misconduct, Trump blasted one opponent based on his height (“little Marco”), countered by the charge that Trump was a crook (“con man”) according to Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, prompting Trump to come back on Senator Cruz (“lying Ted”), and Senator Rubio’s toe-curling grammar school innuendoes followed, knocking Trump’s face, hair and, the most controversial, Trump’s sexual prowess (“small hands”), causing Trump to offer a national on-air description of his private body parts (“no problem there”).

In Loudoun County, despite Senator Rubio’s “below the belt” rhetoric, he was enthusiastically invited to Patrick Henry College to rally his true believers at a school founded “to impact the world ‘for Christ and for Liberty.’”

At the rally, Senator Rubio promised to compromise the medical care anyone was receiving under the Affordable Care Act, to step up the war on terror, to keep Guantanamo open and to “find out everything they [the prisoners there] know,” without saying precisely how he’d make that happen within the law and “as a devout Christian.” Congresswoman Barbara Comstock touted Rubio as “the most conversant on all of the top issues of the day.”

The Republican presidential candidates, including those deeply mired in this dehumanizing dialogue, undeservedly affect a moral superiority as compared with Trump. Continue reading →

Stop trying to focus on the word you used. The word you used is not the problem.

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Bob FitzSimmonds (l) and Steve Martin (r)

Bob FitzSimmonds (l) and Steve Martin (r)

It’s possible, of course, that Bob FitzSimmonds doesn’t know what a common slang word for a part of the female anatomy means (he’s now claiming to have confused it with “twaddle”), although it’s hard to believe – even if he is “an old white guy who needs to get out more.”

If he and his supporters have any sense at all, though, they will stop trying to “explain.” When people try to “explain” to those whom they have just offended not only why they should not be offended, but how their being offended is actually an unfair attack on themselves, it does not go well. (Just ask Virginia State Senator Steve Martin. Actually, don’t ask him, because he still doesn’t get it.)

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Having a woman deliver a lie doesn’t magically make it true

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republicansinyourvaginaLast night the “official” Republican response to the State of the Union address was delivered by Washington representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who didn’t engage in any distracting large motor activities.

Rodgers made the encouraging assertion that the current Republican Party “trusts people to make their own decisions, not a government that decides for you,” and then a bit later that “Republicans believe health care choices should be yours, not the government’s. And that whether you’re a boy with Down syndrome or a woman with breast cancer … you can find coverage and a doctor who will treat you.”

But obviously that is not at all what Republicans believe, as earlier in the day nearly all of them had voted to prevent women from choosing to access abortion care, and they regularly endorse efforts that would allow health care providers, in the guise of “religious freedom,” to refuse to treat people on the basis of their personal beliefs about those people. Most notably this “freedom” to selectively do one’s job has involved pharmacists who don’t believe that people should use birth control, but it can just as easily be invoked to refuse all kinds of medical care to all kinds of people, care like hormone replacement therapy, fertility and prenatal care, and cancer treatment.

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Virginia GOP doubles down on detachment from reality

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E. W. Jackson

In his television ad, Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli attempts to reinvent himself as a progressive (i.e., he wants viewers to see him as someone who “stands up for the vulnerable,” who prioritizes the prevention of sexual assault, who volunteers at homeless shelters, etc.). This ad is clearly targeting the low-information voter (the very best kind for what the GOP has allowed itself to become), because everyone who knows what Mr. Cuccinelli has actually been up to in his time in public office finds it a hilarious farce.

But Virginia Republicans have just hung a millstone around his neck by nominating the florid lunatic E.W. Jackson for Lt. Governor.

Among the many gems surfacing about this guy is evidence that he is one of those deep thinkers who can’t quite grasp the concept of civil rights as it applies to people universally – you know, the rights guaranteed to every American under the 14th Amendment regardless of personal characteristics such as their race, religious affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Continue reading →

Today

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Today, realistic Republicans are secretly praying that the Supreme Court will respond to the arguments presented in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases before it with a broad ruling finding a constitutional right for all Americans to marry the person they love.

That is the only way of avoiding a foreseeable future in which Republicans will be forced to either repeatedly alienate the rapidly growing supermajority of Americans who support equality, or repeatedly betray their own aging base, that angry 36% demanding the “right” to forcibly shove society into still the coat which fitted him when a boy.

If the Court announces a sweeping ruling in June that makes marriage for all the law of the land, GOP strategists can breathe a sigh of relief – they will then be able to deflect the rage of their base toward those nine rogue “unelected judges.”

The alternative future will be a punishing series of state battles over the next four, eight, twelve years and beyond, in which they will not have the luxury of avoiding the issue, however much they might wish they could do so.

In either case, marriage equality is inevitable.

If you want your party to live, pray hard.

The most significant event for equality in recent memory – and it wasn’t the president’s endorsement of marriage

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Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

Before somebody starts yelling at me, let me just say that I’m not diminishing the significance of President Obama’s historic endorsement. It matters. A lot. Go read Andrew Sullivan’s cover essay in this week’s Newsweek for a good summary. “To have the president of the United States affirm my humanity —and the humanity of all gay Americans — was, unexpectedly, a watershed. He shifted the mainstream in one interview.”

But, as a measure of how far the mainstream has actually shifted, nothing beats this much less reported, but must-read document. As Sullivan points out, this is the GOP establishment addressing, bluntly, the GOP establishment. The warning from “highly respected Republican pollster” Jan van Lohuizen really couldn’t be more factual and dispassionate about the situation they are now facing:

In view of this week’s news on the same sex marriage issue, here is a summary of recent survey findings on same sex marriage:

1. Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down. A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year. Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year. The most recent public polling shows supporters of gay marriage outnumber opponents by a margin of roughly 10% (for instance: NBC / WSJ poll in February / March: support 49%, oppose 40%).

And this is what that looks like graphically:

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What I’ve been reading, links worth following

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These are links from my Twitter Feed from today*.

*I may spend a smidge too much time on Twitter.

Unfit for office, unfit for endorsement

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I could never, had I been asked to imagine the most ridiculous and easily verifiable lie that Eugene Delgaudio might invent, have imagined something as ridiculous and easily verifiable as this:

When contacted by the Loudoun Times-Mirror for comment about the exposure of his “Blood Door” email, Mr. Delgaudio told the reporter that the Photoshopped image he had sent to his mailing list was the original and that his image had actually been Photoshopped, by the very people who caught him in this behavior, to make it “look like blood.”

Side by side image comparison by the Loudoun Times-Mirror

When the reporter told me this, I said I thought that was interesting, and suggested that she search on Google images for “blood door.” She did.

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Is this acceptable to you, LTM?

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A second update (the first one appears at the bottom of the post): This is the original image that was photoshopped by Loudoun Republican Eugene Delgaudio to turn the blood “rainbow,” which he then lied about to the Loudoun Times-Mirror. This was found by a commenter via google using the search terms “blood door.”

Image included in the header of an October 25 fundraising letter sent by Eugene Delgaudio

Editor: Please direct the following to all individuals with input into political endorsements at the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Is this what the Loudoun Times-Mirror editorial staff had in mind when you said of Eugene Delgaudio “his view on social issues is unsettlingly conservative and his antics distracting”? The attached image of the GLBT rainbow symbol in the shape of a pool of blood, complete with a gruesome bloody handprint, was sent to the presumed supporters of an elected official to whom you just gave your endorsement for reelection. While it could be described as unsettling, especially if one has been witness to such a crime scene, I don’t think that “conservative,” “distracting” or “antics” would apply.

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