Whatever else you might say about the Ames Straw Poll, it does take some money and organizational skill to win it. The outcome doesn’t necessarily reflect the true sentiments of Iowa’s Republican voters, but anyone who figures out how to be victorious in the Straw Poll probably has a decent chance of figuring out how to do very well in the Iowa Caucuses. When we consider that the winner of the Straw Poll is also leading in the Real Clear Politics collection of Iowa polls, we have to take Rep. Michele Bachmann’s at least somewhat seriously as a candidate. It’s just damn hard to do. Today, she went on the Jay Sekulow Live radio show and said the following about her victory and her message:
BACHMANN: I would say it’s a unified message. It really is about jobs and the economy. That doesn’t mean people haven’t [sic] forgotten about protecting life and marriage and the sanctity of the family. People are very concerned about that as well. But what people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward. And especially with this very bad debt ceiling bill, what we have done is given a favor to President Obama and the first thing he’ll whack is five hundred billion out of the military defense at a time when we’re fighting three wars. People recognize that.
Bachmann is a better speaker than Palin, but I think she meant “unifying,” didn’t she? And she meant “have” not “haven’t.” I hope she also meant “Russia” rather than the now extinct Soviet Union. And who are we going to lose to militarily? Who’s afraid of us losing militarily? Finally, she must assume that the president will force the Republicans (somehow) to refuse to make a deal on the Supercommittee, which will then automatically trigger $600 billion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget (as well as $600 billion in cuts to Medicare providers).
In any case, this is a garbled pile of stupid bullshit, which pretty well describes everything I’ve been hearing from the right since Bush left office. Prior to that, it was much less garbled. Actually, the garbling started when McCain weaponized the stupid by choosing Caribou Barbie as his running mate.
Really?
What a short memory!
AG
well, it’s true that the Republicans have said some incoherent things in the past, but to tell you the truth, Bush is most famous for being ludicrously repetitive and crystal clear.
I have only one thing to say to that, Booman.
Bush was perhaps the biggest clown ever to disgrace the office of the President on United States.
Please.
“Crystal clear?”
Please.
Not even close.
AG
You seem to be confusing two points: the coherence of the message coming from the Republican Party, and the effectiveness of George Bush as a speaker.
God, I had forgotten just how stupid that man sounds when he speaks. The first one.
AG
Glad you’re seeing that she’s an actual contender now lol š
I think it’s possible she’ll split votes with Perry and Romney will win…but I think it’s just as possible that it’ll be a race between Bachmann and Perry. The media isn’t going to fawn over him if he just wins NH and NV.
I watch Bachmann and shake my head in disbelief, but when I remember that Gore chose Liebermann as his running mate and Perry to oversee TX campaign I invariably jump to my feet and scream WTF??
Perry chaired Gore’s campaign in Texas in 1988. In 2000, Perry was the Republican Lt. Gov. of Texas. In 1988, Gore was running from a Southern base, and I guess that Rick Perry was the best he could do in Texas.
In 1988, Richard Shelby was a Democrat.
The choice of Lieberman has looked worse as the years have gone on. But VP choices intend to provide some type of balance to the ticket. (I guess it was Lieberman’s job to win South Florida. Like Buchanan-supporting Palm Beach County, the home of the butterfly ballot.)
I will say to the end of time that Gore should have picked Bob Graham.
That is correct if Florida was the only part of the decision. Most likely the adding of a moral scold to the ticket was aimed at washing away the stench of the Lewinsky scandal that the media kept associating with Gore (and Democrats in general), in an incredible exercise of collective guilt. And having both candidate be from the South for a third time was likely thought of as risky. No doubt “the first Jewish Vice President” appealed as a part of the narrative.
But I agree. Graham would have been much better a candidate than lazy Lieberman was.
I think this is largely correct, but I think it goes too lightly on Gore and his advisers. They honestly seemed to believe that they had a “Clinton problem” and needed to distance Gore from Clinton to win the election. It wasn’t just a case of throwing a bone to the media to get them to shut up, they honestly thought that voters wanted them to distance themselves from Clinton.
Which is where I blame Gore for the failed 2000 campaign. Yeah Bush didn’t have the votes and Florida was a debacle, but it shouldn’t have been close enough for the debacle in Florida to matter. If he’d embraced Clinton, and recognized that Clinton was still incredibly popular with the voters even if his elite buddies in DC still thought of Clinton as “trailer trash” who “trashed the place”, he might have made the margin too large for Bush to do anything with.
Yep, Gore should have run for Clinton’s third term. Instead, he became another victim of the Beltway bubble.
Might have also helped if anyone had his back. If you look at the small donation numbers for Gore in 2000, they were horrific – almost non existent. Meanwhile, little republican grannies were handing over their pennies for Bush in large numbers.
Gore apparently was personally offended by Clinton’s fling with Lewinsky and so when his pollsters (Penn-Schoen) told him the evidence was unclear at best that he was being hampered by a Clinton taint, Gore replaced them with a pollster team (Greenberg) who came back with focus group findings to Gore’s liking — Clinton was a problem for him. Interesting here is that the second pollster group had gone to the WH with Clinton in 1993 only later to be replaced by Penn Schoen — and both polling groups ended up giving Gore polling conclusions seemingly consistent with their own job standing with Clinton.
Gore thus seemed to let his personal feelings get in the way of making sound objective political decisions. He thus made the Clinton matter into some dangerous barrier he had to tiptoe around instead of seeing it as a modest sized political challenge that most skillful and smart pols would strive to manage successfully.
There was that but also a fierce media attack on Gore which he and his team appeared to handle too weakly and defensively, attacks that a more talented pol like Clinton would have known how to rapidly respond to and even turn to his advantage.
Gore could have, certainly should have been a better candidate. It still would have been a tough race — Rove and Shrub being determined to do whatever was necessary using their built in state electoral machinery advantage in FL to produce the needed numbers.
It’s still hard for me to deal with the fact that there is a substantial minority (20%? 35%) who will enthusiastically support a candidate like Bachman or Palin or Perry.
Yet, living in Focus-on-the-Family country, I can’t ignore that there are a lot of normal-looking, normal-acting people who are strongly in this camp.
One insight I can offer is to point to the Tim Tebow phenomenon. I mean, his t-shirts are everywhere here – ESPECIALLY on the small children. He’s the poster child for the Teabagger/Christian Dominionist faction. But ask any one of them (in a nice, non-threatening way) why they like Tebow so much and they really struggle to articulate it. One common response: “It’s great to have a football player who you don’t worry about being a criminal.” Or “…who gives a lot of time to charity.” But there are LOTS of football players like that. Sometimes they mention his Christian identity, but you never say them have this kind of excitement for the Reverend Reggie White, did you?
No, it’s something else. The love them some Tebow because he is ONE OF THEM. He’s white and Christian, in the exclusionary, non-Catholic, non-liberal, non-moderate, non-black, everyone-else-going-to-hell definition that the Focus-on-the-Family types subscribe to. Moreover, he wears this on his sleeve — something else they always love (in direct contradiction to one of Jesus’ main teachings, but that’s nothing unusual for this group). And once you are ONE OF THEM you are golden. The fact that he’s actually a fun-to-watch player just adds to the mix.
The fact that his fun-to-watch-ness puts him in a similar category, football-wise, as a Kordell Stewart (that is, interesting but not going to win anything significant unless the defense carries the team) is something they won’t hear – just as they won’t hear any bad facts about one of their favorite politicians either.
So Bachmann is at the lead among Republicans who care enough to participate in a caucus 1.5 years before the general election. Totally not surprising. They also, for reasons I don’t quite get, seem to really like the idea of supporting female conservative politicians. They love the idea of Thatcher and would have embraced quite a number of GOP women who’ve been Senators or Governors if they hadn’t been pro-choice. Maybe it salves their guilt over their incipient racism to support a woman — I don’t know. But Bachman is without reservation ONE OF THEM so I am not surprised she is where she is.
You had me until the woman part. See, this is one reason I was skeptical of a Palin candidacy in the first place.
About 2 years ago — May of 2009 — I had a huge blow-up with my parents. In the car with my mother, she asked why I hadn’t talked to my friend Kat in a while. I stated that her brother and I had a bit of a fight over torture, and I hadn’t spoken to her in a while. When pressed, mom supported torture. I was immediately disgusted, and I said something about “Even Israel banning it” (at least without some sort of systemic policy in place, anyway). Then she said “Muslims are evil” or something. I asked to get out of the car, she wouldn’t let me. So at a red light I got out of the car, and walked the 7 miles home. I knew there’d be hell to pay later, but I didn’t care.
Eventually when dad got home, we decided it’d be best to have this “discussion” outside so if it turned violent we’d be out in the open for neighbors to see. Anyway, after 3 hours of arguing — lots of stuff, like evolution, torture, abortion, god, religion — eventually dad said, “I don’t want a Muslim president anymore than I want a Nazi president. I also don’t want a WOMAN president.” This fits in with a good chunk of their feelings about women in general (matter of fact, just tonight during a discussion about their friend from church, my mom used the word “obedient” to describe this woman’s actions toward her husband). Namely, women don’t belong in politics because men are supposed to be the “head of the church and family” in every aspect of life. This means that women cannot lead a church unless it’s a church of just women. No joke.
So, let’s just say that I am going to have some fun poking at them when/if Bachmann wins the nom. Who’re you gonna vote for: the woman crazy Christian dominist, or the Kenyan socialist Muslim? Bonus points: are you gonna vote for a Mormon, even when they’ve been called cults by your church leader and yourself?
But, who knows…maybe they’ll throw down their misogyny because she’s a true believer.
My folks are long-time Christian Pentecostals. Same denomination as John Hagee. I would say they’re fairly socially conservative but it rarely ever comes up in conversation.
However, they are also long-time Democratic Party voters. Voted for Clinton and Obama. I’m pretty sure they voted for Gore/Kerry as well. They’re the kind of people that say Bill Clinton was great except for that one thing.
I think they just realized a long-time ago that conservative economic doctrine was total bullshit. They both voted in recall elections against Republicans here in WI recently.
When the woman is essentially a prop for male interests, they’ll vote for her. In particular they like the dynamic of having a woman to point to to claim that they are “the real feminists” (this is popular with some wing nuts I know at the moment).
I don’t think Bachmann will get the nomination because I think the savior is still to come, or Perry will shut up soon, but she’ll be on the ticket for that reason.
They don’t want women in politics or blacks in politics but they will allow tokens just to try to “shut up the liberals”. Palin and Bachmann (and Cain) are not conservative candidates. They are conservative pets. And if elected they must keep quiet and do what the “adults” demand. See the behavior of Clarence Thomas, who never wrote an opinion until it was pointed out that he never wrote an opinion.
It’s a classic racist/misogynist ploy. (At some point in the future it would not surprise me if conservative Republicans put forward a gay candidate with the same requirement that they perform the “crazy script” but not be heard.) And there are a small minority of folks willing to be tokens for the right price.
Actually, BooMan, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, the specifics of the debt deal were misconstrued.
It’s not $600B/10 yr in Medicare spending reductions. It’s only $120B.
According to the BPC, should the trigger force budget sequestration in addition to the planned budget caps, the breakdown would be as follows:
$750B (discretionary cuts due to capped budgets)
+$ 20B (mandatory cuts due to capped budgets)
+$450B (discretionary defense cuts due to sequestration)
+$350B (discretionary non-defense cuts)
+$350B (debt servicing savings)
For roughly $2T in savings overall. So, actually, in order to spare entitlements, the proposed trigger really goes after the discretionary budget instead.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/bookmark-this-chart-what-sequestration-looks-lik
e/2011/08/18/gIQA1WxfNJ_blog.html
The Medicare savings from provider side cuts were vastly overestimated in early reports.
Son of a bitch, obviously there should be a +$120B added to that for the Medicare cuts I just talked about. Sorry about that.
This bugs me. I didn’t think it was $600 billion from Medicare when it was first reported. But what bugs me is that a lot of liberals seem more concerned about cuts made to Medicare as being more important to stop than discretionary programs that help the poor and scientific community. Cuts can always be changed. So long as it’s not a structural change, give me the cuts to Medicare any day. They’re going to kill regulatory agencies and programs for the poor by strictly targeting that budget!
I think you’ve got it backwards. Changes to the structure of Medicare, Social Security, or Medicaid would be harder to undo than reductions in the budgets of various agencies, which could just be raised again later.
If we were looking at hundreds of billions of dollars from entitlements, we’d be into structural-change territory, not just budget cuts.
Oh, I’m completely against structural changes to the programs for the worse. I’m just saying straight cuts.
But, I think there’s an argument that can be made whereby it’s easier to structurally change the programs once proven that we can cut them. So either way you could be right.
The important thing to remember is that no Congress can bind a future Congress except through Constitutional amendment.
The only important numbers are FY2012 and FY2013.
The rest is political posturing for the election. And the election (and the state of the economy) will determine what of that happens next.
I realize that, but I also know there’s been far more heat than light on what the deal is and isn’t. To the point where we’re dealing with stupid shit like FDL and HuffPo screaming at Deaniac83 for calling Krugman a firebagger and so on and so forth, when none of them seem hugely interested in what the deal actually looks like numbers-wise.
The only way people can make informed decisions about the desirability of the trigger vs. what comes from the super committee is if we actually know what we’re talking about here.
But instead, we get the usual nonsense about which side “caved” or “surrendered” or “sold out” more, and it just gets tedious.
Because the farmers in the MidWest have been under the gun since 1980s. Family farms have been foreclosed, people driven from their homes, and they’ve been systematically looted by the banks and the giant ag companies.
And the people in the cities and ‘burbs did jack shit about it because it kept food prices low. The only people who listened and responded were the whacked-out nutburgers.
Read this and learn something.
People in the cities supported the farm program to support family farms. The Congress legislated the programs to tilt to large producers. Most people don’t get down into the weeds to understand how farm programs meant to help people stay on the farm in fact wind up accelerating the exodus of people from farms.
And with ADM and Cargill sponsoring PBS’s news lineup (for example), they are not likely to find out.
And clue for folks on farms. Theirs aren’t the only communities and industries that have been left for dead. And they are not the only folks who attack what is likely to help them more and defend what is likely to help them less.
Finally, don’t neglect the fact that right-wing radio started with small, low-cost, rural stations that were cheap to sign up and had zealous right-wing owners. And that that network has built over thirty years into a multi-billion-dollar propaganda campaign that reaches every precinct (urban, suburban, or rural) in America. It is the competition of “crazy” between personalities on the stations that has driven the focus of the anger away from the banks and corporations and toward the government.
doesn’t she mean the 20th anniversary of the attempted coup that led to the disbanding of the Soviet Union?
Take Bachmann seriously as a candidate? It’s probably more to the point to stop taking Iowa so seriously. The role of Iowa in presidential elections is silly: ten people telling millions who they might vote for. With an ethanol subsidy thrown in for good luck. What does Iowa say to and me? ‘We are the heartland’. What does the ‘media’ say about Iowa? ‘It is the trueland’. Maybe more correctly, ‘It’s the unknown nowhere’. Oh i’ve forgotton for a moment that nowadays all people are equal whether they say the earth is round or the earth is flat.
Iowa is nuts. A win, if she gets it, would be Pat Robertson or Buchanan Part Two. I’m actually rooting for Romney now. I’m sick of these crazy fucks.
No, I think she meant unified. As in a message that ties it all together. Jobs and good economy make us strong, we are concerned about weakening, Obama makes us weak. The message is all a unified whole.
However the haven’t/have thing is probably right.
And I have to ask, so what if it’s garbled? They’ve won with it, why should they stop now?
The proper answer is that it doesn’t happen in a great country, Booman.
So…I guess that means we’re not great anymore.
Were we ever?
It depends on your definition of “great,” I suppose.
We were powerful, that’s for sure. It’s not so sure anymore though, except of course for our power to destroy the world.
We were gifted with vast resources…natural resources and human resources both. How well have we used them? (Fail.)
We were a noble…and nobly flawed…democratic experiment. A multiracial, multicultural experiment as well. A long experiment…since the 1600s. I am afraid that the final results of that experiment are now about to come in, and the results are not looking too good.
Not very good at all.
So it goes.
Maybe we can learn from our failure.
Or…maybe Michelle Bachmann can become president.
We shall see.
Soon enough.
Bet on it.
AG
“the rise of the soviet union”?
what year does she think this is?
but seriously, this is the kind of thing that happens in a “once-great” country, whether it’s the Soviet Union or the United States.
I say “once great” because we’ve squandered our wealth, we’ve sent out jobs away, we’ve weakened our schools, and we’ve corrupted our people.
that’s why crazy people like Michele Bachmann have followers.
People get tired of being ignored and told they don’t matter. How much notice is given to the contributions of the flyover states in this country. We don’t want to acknowledge that we demand an endless supply of food and of soldiers to fight in our wars, and would rather mock than visit the midwest.
Pols like Bachmann express for their fans the resentment they feel against the elitist intellectuals who try to run their world. Just look at Obama’s act in Iowa for a clue to that.
Depending on the individual, a vote will express certain amounts of resentment, fear, racism, sexism, jingoism, and religion. Those are the targets of Republicans everywhere. And of pols who want to win the votes of their inferiors.
Bachmann and Palin don’t make people feel inferior. As long as they keep making some people feel superior, we’ll hear about them.
.. & as long as they’re women, some people will feel superior automatically.
It’s not $600 billion in cuts to Medicare providers in the trigger. It’s $600 billion in cuts to domestic spending, some of which will come in the form of cuts to Medicare providers. The language is a 2% across-the-board cut to providers, but I don’t know how much that adds up to.