Day: January 28, 2013

Same GOP Chair and Members Reach Same GOP Conclusions

Trish

We’ve heard it before. “Compassionate conservatism” springs to mind. But the GOP’s search for reasons behind the trouncing it took in the 2012 elections will continue to prove fruitless as long as the party keeps coming up with the reassuring but false answer that they just need to improve their talking points.

Steve Benen, on the Maddow Blog:

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus declared, “It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue. In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said.”

Benen: GOP officials took a long look in the mirror and decided… they’re awesome just the way they are!

An RNC member from West Virginia added, “We don’t need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes.”

I see. So a few months after a national election in which President Obama won re-election fairly easily, Senate Democrats unexpectedly expanded their majority, and House Democrats received well over 1 million more votes than House Republicans, GOP officials took a long look in the mirror and decided … they’re awesome just the way they are.
[…]

Taibbi Not Happy with Obama’s Choice for SEC Chair

Buck Banks

I thought to myself: Couldn’t they have found someone who wasn’t a key figure in one of the most notorious scandals to hit the SEC in the past two decades? And couldn’t they have found someone who isn’t a perfect symbol of the revolving-door culture under which regulators go soft on suspected Wall Street criminals, knowing they have million-dollar jobs waiting for them at hotshot defense firms as long as they play nice with the banks while still in office?

— Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, expressing his displeasure with President Obama’s pick of former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White to head the SEC.

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Obama: The Press are ‘Incorrigible’

Buck Banks

You know, Steve, I gotta tell you, the — you guys in the press are incorrigible. I was literally inaugurated four days ago. And you’re talking about elections four years from now.

— President Obama, in an interview with 60 Minutes, responding to a question about the “date of expiration” of his endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s job as secretary of state.