Rick Santorum jolted the Republican presidential race Tuesday with a three-state sweep of nominating contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota, puncturing Mitt Romney's claim to be the unstoppable front-runner...... Of the eight nominating contests so far, Mr. Santorum has now won four, while Mr. Romney has won three and Newt Gingrich one—a tally that seemed unlikely only a few days ago. ..... Mr. Santorum's Missouri victory margin was substantial: He won 75,000 more votes than Mr. Romney and 29,000 more than Mr. Romney's combined Iowa and Nevada totals..... what could be a long, state-by-state fight for convention delegates. ...... Super Tuesday..... In a sign of how the race was leaping toward that showdown, Mr. Gingrich spent most of Tuesday campaigning in Ohio, a Super Tuesday state, while Mr. Romney planned to fly Wednesday to Georgia, which also votes that day.
If the creationists in the Deep South needed proof that we did indeed descend from the apes, well, Newt Gingrich just opened his mouth.
New York Times: G.O.P. Uses Obama ‘Otherness’ As Campaign Tactic: Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who this week accused Mr. Obama, whose father was a Kenyan economist and spoke out against the occupying force in his country, of exhibiting “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”
I am sick and tired of people suggesting the Republicans are going to storm the House like they did in 1994. 2010 is not 1994. Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton. Here are some reasons why.
There is no Newt Gingrich in the picture.
There is no Contract On America. There is not likely to be one. The only things the Republicans have is obstructionism and the Bush policies. The voters already decided in 2008 how they felt about the Bush policies. And obstructionism does not get you votes. You have to have a positive agenda. The Republicans don't have one.
Barack Obama is not Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton's economic record was outstanding, but Obama has beat Bill Clinton in the greatness department. To me that was a foregone conclusion on the campaign trail itself. And the greatness went official after he passed health care reform, something presidents struggled over for half a century.
Bill Clinton's health care reform had failed as he headed into November 1994. Barack Obama's health effort passed. That is his backdrop as he heads into November 2010.
Barack Obama has been compared with JFK, with FDR, but never with Bill Clinton. Now is not the time to start on that. Clinton and Obama are just different. Their styles are very different.
Bill Clinton did not campaign much for 1994. He was considered too unpopular to be effective. Barack Obama's popularity is not the same it was in December 2008, but it is still good.
Barack is going to be able to explain that the Wall Street meltdown was an unexpected inheritance. The bailout happened before he got there. He is going to be able to explain the stark necessity of the stimulus bill. Without it the country would have been in Great Depression II right now. The unemployment rate would have been closer to 30% than 10%. The American people are going to understand that.
He is going to be able to say he wants to focus on Congress reform and immigration reform in 2011. That he is a foe of debt and deficits and they will be at the center of his 2012 agenda going into the second term. But these past two years have not been the time for balanced budgets. These past two years have been the biggest economic crisis in 70 years. And the government had to step in to avoid Great Depression II.
The Tea Party "movement" has made the GOP even more of a minority party. The harsh voices that are known to alienate people in the mainstream have taken over.
Barack is going to be able to energize the Obama surge crowd of 2008, not to the same extent perhaps as 2008. But he is going to make the case and they are going to come out in large enough numbers. One important point he has to make is that grassroots electioneering is not the same as grassroots governance. The netroots/grassroots need to acquire governance literacy. You can't attain power and then lose interest in it once you have it. But governance does require that you become more knowledgeable of the contours of power, of the compulsions of the opposition party, the compulsions of the various interest groups within your own party. Energizing people to show up to vote one day is comparatively simple. But governance is about conducting complex transactions on a daily basis. And the grassroots has to take an interest in that exercise of power like it took great interest in attaining that power. So far the grassroots has not lived up to the idea of grassroots governance. It does not have to be that way. You got to act like a party that feels being in power is but natural to you. You can't be feeling awkward and out of place once in power as if you miss being in opposition. Some of the netroots/grassroots act like they miss being in opposition. That has to go.
They did not show up for either Bush, Clinton, or the elder Bush. So this is not partisan. They did not show up for FDR, so this is not to do with the Great Depression's grand cousin, the Great Recession that we are ploughing through right now.
This is about race and racism. This is guttural. This is about some guys showing up with knives at a Hillary health care rally in Oregon in 1994. That was about gender, like Newt Gingrich told Bob Reich back then, "Tell the president, we like him, but his wife should not be making policy."
You can be thrown in jail for putting in writing that you intend to harm the President Of The United States, but you are okay if you show up for his rally with a gun? This makes absolutely no sense. The news is not that they are showing up, but that we are putting up with their showing up with their guns.
Granted the secret service keeps cordons around the POTUS, but how long before some nut mows down about 10 people in the audience before we cry Columbine? The political damage would be huge.
Sotamayor is a Minority Female. That is like being Dalit in India.
Old white men like Newt Gingrich have always occupied the White House until now. They have always been the only people on the Supreme Court until recently. The Supreme Court has never had a Minority Female. The old white men still overwhelmingly dominate the Congress. What's wrong in the picture? Until recently there was no bathroom for women on Capitol Hill.
There have been times when I have admired Newt Gingrich. He comes up with ideas. I am a big fan of market solutions to long standing problems. Where I differ is when he thinks market solutions are the only solutions.
But on social issues Newt is a dinosaur.
As late as 2005, late into 2006, the Dems looked so irrelevant. So I am one of those to think the Republicans are going to have a comeback down the line. That is how democracy works. But such pendulum swings are not automatic. The Republicans are going to have to stop being the party of old white men if they are to have any shot at reoccupying the vital center of American politics.
In The News
The Typecast Party Newsweek The Republicans are a party in search of an identity, and the incendiary language surrounding the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has shown just how far off track they've gone. Sotomayor is better qualified in terms of her legal credentials than anybody currently on the court. .......... the over-the-top remarks from Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo created a backlash that Senate Republicans are still trying to dig their way out of with Hispanic voters and women without offending the party's Southern-white-male base. ......... A USA Today/Gallup poll this week found a third of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of their own party. ........ "She's boring," says a liberal activist. ......... She hasn't had to address guns, gay rights, abortion. ..... Sotomayor can't be stopped, and that could embolden Obama to be even more aggressive with his next appointment. ..... The expectation is that if Ginsburg steps down, her replacement would almost certainly be a woman ....... "Free this nation from this Obama oppression," Voight intoned at the GOP dinner. ...... If only Obama could hand down affordable access for all to health care on a stone tablet. GOP risks loss of respect if it goes after Sotomayor, poll findsMiamiHerald.com
If Bobby runs in 2012, he could not win in 2016, because that will show he does not have good political sense. But I think his wife Supriya has made it absolutely clear he is not running in 2012. If he does not run in 2012, all bets are off for 2016.
The party elected Michael Steele in a knee jerk way, but I don't get the impression they are accepting his leadership. The guy is too black for many old fashioned Republicans.
Bobby has to do now what Bill Clinton did when Reagan was president. His effort was called the Democratic Leadership Council. He did not try too hard to become a big shot inside the party. He focused on being a good Governor, and he worked hard to come up with a new set of ideas to reinvent his own party, take on his own special interests that had taken the party into the ditch. And when it was his time, he ran and won.
What could some of those ideas be to claim the center?
This economy will turn around. Once it does, Obama will work hard to cut deficits, but he might not manage to get it all done. So Bobby's message today of balancing budgets will suddenly become sexy in 2016. About the current financial mess, Bobby had this to say: "Let's face it, we are addicted to debt!" That is one sharp-eyed conservative. He is not putting all blame on the bankers. He is saying we the people have to take responsibility.
Emphasize family, emphasize faith. But emphasize family without sounding sexist, and emphasize faith without sounding racist, or you lose independents like me.
Santorum Drops By Iowa State Fair (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)Republican Porridge
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