Tag: Campaign 2012
Republicans Accept $18 Million Government Bailout for Convention Expenses
You know how Republicans are always telling the rest of us that we need to get by without federal assistance, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, to pay our own way, and to just generally be self-sufficient? Well when it comes to throwing parties, forget all that!
Republicans are helping themselves to $18 million of the public dole for party planning for their 2012 national convention in Tampa. Let the good times roll!
Let me beat FOX News to the false equivalence punch by acknowledging that Democrats will likely accept funding for their convention in Charlotte. But there’s a difference.
Organizers of the 2012 Republican National Convention have received a $18 million grant from the Federal Elections Commission for planning and preparation…
The money, which comes from the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, had been anticipated and is intended for payroll for staff members, travel, office supplies and other convention-related expenses.
While charges of hypocrisy might apply to the GOP for accepting the grant, that case certainly can’t be made concerning Republican deficit handling. The first use of quite a few of those many, many benjamins is paying off debt racked up in the past few years, when fundraising didn’t keep pace with spending.
Racists for Cain: Why Are Tea Party Voters Giving His Plan to Raise Taxes a Pass?
It is a sign of the times that an African-American Republican, Herman Cain, is leading by double digits in South Carolina, the heart and soul of the Old Confederacy, a hotbed of the Neo-Confederate tea-party movement today and an early primary state next year.
According to an InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research poll [PDF] of likely South Carolina voters conducted for the Augusta (S.C.) Chronicle on Oct. 16, Cain leads second-place candidate Mitt Romney 32-16 percent. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a sometimes advocate of secession, is a close third with 12 percent, while also-rans New Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmman and Jon Huntsman bring up the rear in single digits. Rick Santorum, the single-issue, anti-gay candidate, failed to muster even 1 percent support.
(It is unclear why 17 Democrats were included in a poll about the Republican primary, but Cain led among these Democrats with nearly 55 percent while Michele Bachmann trailed among Dems, with 22.5 percent.)
So what does Cain’s ascendancy say about the Republican Party and its tea party base, with its nearly all-white, mostly middle-aged demographics? […]
Rick Perry’s Cult Problem: What Is His Connection to the New Apostolic Reformation, a Powerful End-Times Cult Seeking World Dominion?
Is Mormonism a cult? Earlier this month, Rev. Robert Jeffress, a surrogate for Rick Perry, made headlines when he declared that it was. Pundits on both sides have also said so. Fox News host Mike Huckabee described Mormonism as a “satanic cult” when he ran for president in the 2008 GOP primaries. On the left, Bill Maher endorsed Jeffress’ view during an interview with him on Maher’s HBO show Friday night.
But if the Mormon Church is a cult, what would you call a small but powerful evangelical faction that believes in demons and witches, that performs exorcisms on a regular basis and whose belief that apocalypse is nigh compels them to overthrow national governments worldwide through “spiritual warfare” and replace them all with a single, global Iranian-style theocracy, with themselves in charge?
These are, in fact, the beliefs and objectives of the New Apostolic Reformation, a dominionist, end-times cult to which both Rick Perry and Sarah Palin have very public ties.
Perry’s Wife Not Clear on the Concept of Unemployment
He resigned his job two weeks ago because he can’t go out and campaign with his father because of SEC regulations…My son lost his job because of this administration.
Anita Perry, wife of Gov. Rick Perry (Tex. – GOPvangelical), responding sympathetically to a voter at a South Carolina diner who told the Perrys he is working as a handyman since losing his job. Griffin Perry resigned as an investment advisor at Deutche Bank to hit the campaign trail with his dad.
Obama Determined to Depress Voter Enthusiam in California
Federal prosecutors are threatening to shut down medical marijuana dispensaries throughout California, sending letters that warn landlords to stop sales of the drug within 45 days or face the possibility that their property will be seized and they will be charged with a crime.
The stepped-up enforcement escalates the Obama administration’s efforts to rein in the spread of pot stores, which accelerated after the attorney general announced in 2009 that federal prosecutors would not target people using medical marijuana in states that allow it.
“It’s coming out of left field as far as we’re concerned,” said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access, which advocates for medical marijuana use. “I really don’t know what inspired this. It’s a complete about-face from what [Obama] said when he was campaigning.”
Perry Preacher at Christian Conclave: ‘Mormonism Is a Cult’
The first real inkling that the Republican presidential primary race could devolve into a religious infighting between extreme right Christianists and Mormons — a repeat of the lowest moments of the 2008 GOP primaries — surfaced at the Values Voters Summit in Washington on Friday.
The Christian nationalist champion this time, at least for the moment, is Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The Mormons include this year’s perennial frontrunner former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as well as former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman,
In his introduction to Perry at the values conclave, Dr. Robert Jeffress, who preaches at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, wasted no time smearing Romney’s religion:
W. Mitt Romney – the ‘W’ Stands for ‘Weasel’
I happened to catch a few minutes of this interview with Mitt Romney by the editorial board of the Union Leader, a Republican newspaper in New Hampshire, on C-SPAN the other day. It had been a while since I’d heard Romney speak extemporaneously outside the debate setting, and I had forgotten how badly he presents himself. (The stammer is a particularly galling affectation meant to convey earnestness.)
Had I been able to stomach the entire thing, I would have caught a moment of supreme weaselry, when Romney was asked about the active-duty soldier in Iraq who was booed by tea baggers at the Republican presidential debate in Orlando earlier this month:
