There are a lot of reasons that people hate politicians, but one of them is that they so frequently do things not because they have any intrinsic merit but simply to score cheap political points. For example, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is introducing amendments to the immigration bill that he hopes will make him look better than Marco Rubio to the Republican base should they wind up squaring off against each other for the 2016 presidential nomination. These amendments have no chance of passing, and if they did pass they would scuttle the bill. One amendment would “eliminate the pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants and lift the caps on guest workers.” Another “would give Congress — and not Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — ultimate authority on deciding when the southern border is secure.”
Robert Haus, an Iowa-based Republican strategist who worked for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) 2012 presidential campaign, said Paul’s amendment would give him a political edge.
“Yes, I think it probably does. Whether or not that early advantage holds sway remains to be seen,” Haus said.
“It at least gives him a calling card and talking point to start some of that early work. I don’t know how it functionally works to have Congress certify. Congress can barely tie its own shoelaces.”
Think about what Mr. Haus is saying. He’s saying that Paul’s idea is the dumbest idea ever, but it will probably give him a leg-up with Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers because they are predominately morons.
Would that be the base of diminishing returns? Only in a Party that has gerrymandered itself into pockets where their inbred ideas are considered wholesome would this be considered an advantage.
The second Rand Paul gets close to the nomination a media deluge will fall on him and wash him out.
Just ask his dad. Nobody paid attention to him. But the minute he started leading Iowa as the non-romney of the month, the media dropped a ton of bricks on him revealing his racist, sexist, homophobic, white supremacist newsletters.
Just ask the other non-romneys. Santorum, Newt, Bachmann, Cain were all ignored until they started polling well and then they melted under the spotlight of scrutiny.
I wish he would get the nomination, but God doesn’t love me that much. Why even the liberal New Republic lobs a brick with a “in your gutz you know he’s nutz” cover photo.
That photo looks seriously photoshopped. And why take a picture looking up at him like that?
it’s an actual photo. the wingers are screaming bloody murder.
“why take a picture looking up at him like that?”
Frankly, to me it looks like a perp photo (ie usual suspects)
A real photo? With his fingers crossed??? Count me a bit skeptical, too.
So there’s that.
I stand corrected. Wonder what Paul thought they might use a picture like that for? An odd thing for him to do.
I thought it was an obvious homage to the Stalin-era totalitarian style. The godlike upshot, the awful suit/tie, the deep facial shadows — Big Daddy showing off his power. Maybe Paul has a sense of humor after all and was willing to parody his own ambitions? Nah.Whatever the reasons, the cover might just become classic.
As soon as I typed the above I realized that the archetype I responded to was not Stalin but Juan Peron.
The Paulite crowd will of course go through a series of cognitive dissonance with the media.
“The media is ignoring Paul because they know how popular he would be if only he got the warranted attention.”
media shines light on beliefs
“The liberal media is biased against Paul by talking about him all the time.”
The whole “securing the border” line is the heart of the stupid. Securing the border against who or what? Some workers looking for temporary exploitative work? “Terrorists” trying to infiltrate in the most difficult manner possible? Drug dealers, who have nothing to do with the “security” of the United States? Gun runners smuggling US arms into Mexico to fuel the slaughter there?
And yet they pile shit onto garbage by talking nonsense like “total border security”, as if such a thing is even theoretically possible. And as if it’s nonetheless an essential precondition to immigration reform.
However, I don’t see that this Haus person is saying anything like you say he’s saying. Sounds like the standard empty political nothingness to me.
When those bigoted people in my white-bread community say, “secure the border”, what they really mean is “get rid of all these damn Mexicans around here so I don’t have to see them at the grocery store, hear them talking their gibberish on the street and look at those bilingual signs at the local bank.”
They don’t give a flying fuck about “security”. It’s all part and parcel of “taking back my country”.
There’s certainly a great deal of overlap, but I think there really are people who want a militarized, locked-down border as a national-security effort.
It’s an appallingly stupid idea, but I think there are people who would consider the closing of the Mexican border to a trickle, so every person and vehicle passing can be put through something like airport security, to be a sound exercise in keeping us safe.
Ron Paul wants this, by the way. When he talks about bringing the troops home, he doesn’t want to give them a pink slip, he wants them lined up patrolling the Mexican-American border.
It’s frustrating to me how little thought anyone gives to what it would mean to us, as a people, to become a country that puts up a wall along the border and guards it like there’s a war on.
It makes you a different person to live like that, and it makes you a different country. We’d be choosing to be more like East Germany or North Korea.
But Joe. Don’t you understand that “a nation without borders isn’t a nation at all”?
They want to stop the Brown Peril. Nothing else makes sense even in their crazy world. He is telling the Tea Party,”I’ll stop those S__cs”.
I believe the proper term among Republican Congresspeople – going on Rep. Don Young’s word here – is “w***ks.” Get your racial epithets straight.
Ah! Wrong decade.
Steady there — those predominately white morons and their not too different Democratic counterpart, select our Presidential nominees and are seconded by the morons in either NH or SC. This unfortunate development apparently can’t be changed as the IA and NH have become as dependent on the quadrennial flood of money as the MIC is for federal contracts.
Rand Paul as the Republican nominee? I was wrong, there is a God and She is smiling on the Democratic Party.
Several things wrong with that:
Also, remember, these people have been pleasuring themselves this way since they were in their mother’s womb.