Alexandra Jaffe has a bizarre and needlessly exculpatory way of reporting the news around former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s recent comments about the president.
Washington (CNN)- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s comments that he doesn’t think President Barack Obama “loves America” have put potential Republican presidential contenders in a bind, caught between a desire to criticize the President and the need to respect the office of the presidency.
To begin with, Giuliani had a lot more to say than just that the president doesn’t love America. He said that the president doesn’t love you or me. He said he was essentially a communist. And he said he wasn’t “particularly a product of African-American society” (as if that would be a bad thing) because he was raised by (radical) whites.
So, what is the “bind” for Republican candidates?
That they don’t want to be seen as “soft” on the president by pointing out that Rudy Giuliani is nuts? That they’re unwilling to equate him with Victoria Jackson who has said that the president isn’t a Christian because he supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights, and that he’s “aiding and abetting ISIS” because he’s really “one of them”, an “Islamic jihadist”?
You have to split hairs to see the difference between Jackson’s comments and Giuliani’s, but somehow simply acknowledging this puts Republicans in a bind?
Ms. Joffe goes on to detail the nuanced differences between how people like Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio have responded to Giuliani’s remarks, but the real story here is the Republican base whose allegiance these men are competing for in their effort to raise money and raise their positions in the polls.
What’s wrong with the Republican base that this kind of rhetoric is so attractive to them that anyone who casts doubt about its sanity is put at a disadvantage?
In this case, I have to completely agree with Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
Democrats seized on the comments as further evidence of how extreme the Republican Party can be. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at the DNC’s winter meeting it was fine for the parties to disagree and debate over policy.
“But for them, it’s more than that. It’s personal, and it’s ugly, and there’s no sign of it getting better,” she said.
She called on the developing GOP presidential field to “stand up, say, ‘enough.’”
“I would challenge my Republican colleagues and anyone in the Republican Party to say enough. They need to start leading,” she said.
The problem is, we’re at the point where leadership simply isn’t rewarded by the right. The only thing that is rewarded is doling out red meat, usually related to someone who is alive but shouldn’t be.
So Obama previously takes heat for Rev. Wright’s statements but still may not be a Christian. Consistency, not so much.
See the problem is the TP/GOP provided a home for those with numerous shall we say social inadequacies. The result is a base full of all kinds of people that the pharmaceutical industry loves and others that still need additional help.
And the problem for the rest of us is that those are exactly the people suited to forming the nucleus of a genuine fascist movement.
Rudy isn’t “crazy”.
He’s deranged.
The difference is in the perceived dangerousness and entertainment value.
Republicans are far from being in a bind. They are doubling down.
Vichy Democrats are the ones in a bind.
And today apparently, on CBS John McCain doubled down. I know it’s oft said over the past two decades, but shame on Bob Schieffer.
Re Bob Schieffer, agreed. I used to think that he was a better journalist that he is of late. Sadly though, most of the MSM, at least of the broadcast variety of cut from the same cloth and whatever principled views that use to have they’ve apparently discarded.
I think it’s cause of who OWNS the media.
Schieffer swings from mushy middle to hard right. Palin is so pathetic that she fell down when confronted by a mere mushy middle interviewer. Had it been a hard left interviewer in Schieffer’s sit back in Sept. 2008, Palin would have shriveled up and disappeared from the public stage within a month.
Appears that Chuck Todd and MTP committed the sin of actual reporting this morning. Dared to ask if it was even relevant to report on statements made by Guiliani.
On a related note, Maureen Dowd penned an adult and fact based Op-Ed: Jeb Bush’s Brainless Trust. Even the title is good.
Hell hasn’t (and can’t because it doesn’t exist) frozen over, but a NYC deep freeze may have led to a couple of miracles.
Giuliani is not deranged, crazy or whatever. He is simply an exceptionally nasty piece of work whose doing the bidding of other repugnants or of a claque of donors. He has no personal ambitions for public office. His bank accounts are undoubtedly on his mind. He just takes the nastiness and stupidity a few rungs higher. I repeat: he is not crazy, take him seriously, he is a harbinger of things to come increasingly as Nov. 2016 approaches.
I reply to myself: this is what we’ve come to.
Is this what we’ve come to? Apparently.
The media and the voters have rewarded them so far for this behavior while hobbling Democratic responses.
No, we’re paying attention. You might enjoy this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEFuOu0XTEU
A fascist movement is certainly not going to call fascist rhetoric “crazy”. Indeed, it’s perhaps crazy to expect anything from today’s GOoP other than doubling down on Giuliani’s McCarthyite sewage.
The bigger question is why it is so hard to call the American “conservative” movement “fascist”.
This sort of rhetoric and behavior (once quaintly seen as vile and un-American) now does not harm the GOoP politically—indeed, they benefit from it. So expect more of the same.