I really don’t pay much attention to polls about issues. I only trust polls where there is some accountability moment, like actual election numbers. And I only trust pollsters who have a good track record and don’t monkey around early in campaign season trying to boost one side or the other. Yet, I can’t remember ever seeing a poll where Medicare and Social Security were unpopular, even among Republicans. So, Rick Perry isn’t going to win a lot of fans by saying that our prized retirement programs are unconstitutional. “Elect me, and I’ll return your Medicare to the States!’ doesn’t seem like a winning slogan.
The rise of the Tenthers is a bizarre development. It’s an especially odd stance to take for a presidential candidate. Why? Because it’s like interviewing for a job and telling your prospective boss that you’ll be happy to be employed but you plan on eliminating almost all your job responsibilities as soon as you’re hired. “I’ll still file an annual report, but the rest of it will be handled by contractors.”
He’s running to be a Do-Nothing president.
Well, if that ass was president, doing nothing would be the optimum outcome. Besides, the Goddamn Old Pissants don’t want a president at all, because that would require a government, which they devoutly work to drown.
Yeah. I’d give real money if I could go back in time to make George W a do-nothing president.
Alas.
If we’re gonna play the “go back in time” game, let’s go back to Appomatox, and try those SOBs from the South for treason.
Well that’s the way they like it. I have talked to a lot of conservatives who think we should bring back the Articles.
Anyway, like DaveW said, that would be optimal, because eliminating Medicare and SS as we know it would be “doing something.”
Folks who want to bring back the Articles of Confederation really want to bring back slavery. Why else would they get concerned about “Liberty” just because an African American president got elected?
States rights was a refuge for a slave society. States rights was a refuge for the segregationists. When these same folks contemplate laws against abortion or gay marriage, states rights is nowhere to be seen.
Q.E.D.
He’s just adhering to the GOP’s austere yet profound philosophy of government, under which there are two, but only two, legitimate exercises of state power — killing brown people who worship the wrong God or talk funny, and providing your cronies with boodle and a police escort for their getaway cars en route to the Caymans.
Well, three — riding herd on what kind of sex you have. But that may not be on Perry’s personal list.
worshipping the correct God is really not all that helpful. Ask the Nicaraguans or the Filipinos or the Panamanians.
All Catholics. Worse yet, they’re brown. And they all talk funny. At least, that’s the rumor; nobody’s ever actually talked with one.
They were born in the wrong country. (Evangelical Christians believe God ordained this country special…and Israel).
God, maybe I should run as a Tea Partier…I speak their language almost as well as Digby.
Well, we all know that Catholics along with most Methodists, Episcopalians and such do not reliably worship the One True God of insufferable vanity, brutality, and vengefulness.
well, there’s also helping corps extract resources from other countries
“Also, I think this organization screws up almost everything it tries to do, and I’ve been telling everybody that.”
Voting people into office who think government is the problem is just begging for it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
not by itself, they actively work to show they are correct
Huh, really?? Hasn’t this essentially been the main thrust of the Tea Party from the get-go?? Here in our local area, it certainly has been something that most dyed-in-the-wool TP’ers have espoused from the early days. I had the tenther argument thrown at me at least two years ago by local Tea Partiers, so I don’t really find it odd at all that a candidate might finally be formulating it into a campaign stance. It is at the core of the whole insanity that has become the Republican Party.
Bizarre?? I don’t think so. I find it the most natural evolution imaginable.
If you think that Rick Perry is going to be a do-nothing president, you do not understand Texas politicians. Perry will try to finish what he thought George W. Bush was about.
The people be damned, Rick Perry if he coyly wends his way to election with the help of the Village like George W. Bush did, will immediately try to put a stake through the heart of what remains of the New Deal. He will allow states to begin disenfranchising voters, most likely will order federal agencies to deny climate change and forbid teaching of evolution.
An the federal government will grow, if only in the military.
The Tenthers is not an odd stance if you are running for a base in the South. It’s the only way he can now flank Bachmann. The Tenther assertion means one thing and one thing only — state nullification of laws that Southern Christian bigots do not like. When it comes to laws restricting abortion or gay marriage, the will assert national power.
For all their talk about “conservative principles”, Southern conservative politicians work on what sells, not what is consistent with some “conservative principle”. It is a cynical ploy to rile up the voters enough to get turnout. Perry, like Bush, might be as dumb as Louis Goehmert, but his handlers are not. They have mapped out a strategy of red meat for the base, a tack to the center in style while calling out the President as a leftist extremist because he doesn’t believe in the Tenth amendment. And they want to bring a Congress with them so they can get to work fast.
Don’t mistake rhetoric for intent. Remember Bush’s “humble foreign policy”.
George Bush, October 2000 Debate with Al Gore, “America isn’t in the business of nation building.” This phrase was borrowed from Newt Gingrich who knows his British History enough to swipe phrases like “Welfare State,” and “Nation Building” that have very little applicability to American history.
Nation building has its roots in the British Empire and the establishment of the Commonwealth after that. We gave aid to the Philippines after taking it back from the Japanese. That’s about the extent of our nation building endeavors. At any rate, it’s kind of interesting to see the money Bush lavished on Iraq and Afghanistan as he indulged in Haliburton brand “nation building.”
it’s all about handlers. none of these get-obama-party candidates, except Romney, are really running, they have been fielded or adopted by kochinc. It’s interesting about Romney, imo he is really running on his own and the koch cannot control him. watch them use their $ against him
Medicare is federal, how would he return something to the states that the states never had in the first place?
It’s a return to their rightful place, in Perry’s view.
Except the “return these functions to the states” argument just means “do nothing”, because state legislatures under the GOP will say it’s too expensive.
The federal government intervened in the New Deal because states could or would not act. Remember this was before the days of state balanced budget amendments.
They’ve all signed on to the Koch Family plan, no doubt derived from the John Birch Society, of which big daddy Koch was so enamored.