Tag: GOP Stupidity

Johnson from Wisconsin Is Dumb as a Box of Rocks, Son

Buck Banks

“To call what happened on January 6 an ‘armed insurrection,’ I just think, is not accurate.”

— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) repeated his claim Tuesday that the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was not an “armed insurrection,” adding however, that protesters “did teach us how you can use flag poles, that kind of stuff, as weapons,” CNN reports.

The Ignorance of Marjorie Taylor Greene Has No Bottom

Buck Banks

“Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens.”

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was mocked after ranting about the “gazpacho police” patrolling the U.S. Capitol on a podcast, The Guardian reports.Greene apparently confused cold Spanish soup with the Gestapo, the Nazi-era secret police in Germany.

GOP Candidates Don’t Know What Carpet Bombing Is

Buck Banks

Carpet bombing would be completely useless. It’s totally contrary to the American way of war. Total disregard for civilians. So, I mean, part of the concern that I have with the campaign, particularly when it comes to national security, is that the solutions being offered are so simplistic and so at odds with the reality of the rest of the world, with the way the world really works.

— Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, quoted by Politico, saying the GOP presidential candidates “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Sarah Palin Advocates Speaking “American”

Buck Banks

I think we can send a message and say, you want to be in America, A, you’d better be here legally or you’re out of here; B, when you’re here, let’s speak American. I mean that’s what’s — let’s speak English and that’s a kind of a unifying aspect of the nation is the language that is understood by all.

— Sarah Palin, quoted by the Huffington Post.

Krugman Explains Why the GOP Hates Social Security

Buck Banks

What’s puzzling about the renewed Republican assault on Social Security is that it looks like bad politics as well as bad policy. Americans love Social Security, so why aren’t the candidates at least pretending to share that sentiment? The answer, I’d suggest, is that it’s all about the big money. … By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates … Nowadays, at least on the Republican side, the invisible primary has been reduced to a stark competition for the affections and, of course, the money of a few dozen plutocrats.

New York Times.

GOP Still Trying to Ram Through Romney’s 2012 Economic Plan

Buck Banks

The fact that a major party could even propose anything like this is a display of astonishing contempt for democratic norms. Republicans ran on this plan and lost by 5 million votes. They also lost the Senate and received a million fewer votes in the House but held control owing to favorable district lines. Is there an example in American history of a losing party issuing threats to force the majority party to implement its rejected agenda?

— Jonathan Chait, looking at the Republican list of demands to raise the debt ceiling and concluding, “It’s Mitt Romney’s 2012 economic plan. Almost word for word, in fact.”

Could It Be that Republicans are Just Too Stupid to Govern?

Buck Banks

But there’s another alternative worth considering: What if House members are trying to act in their self-interest; they’re just exceptionally bad at figuring out what that is? What if they’re, you know, kinda dumb? For example, if you’re a House Republican, presumably you have some policy preferences: You’d like to massively cut taxes for the wealthy, you’d like to slash spending for the poor, you’d like to privatize Social Security and voucherize Medicare. In short, you’d like to enact the Ryan plan in its full, Randian glory. But, of course, there’s no way to do that as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House. And, unfortunately, as long as you’re committed to acting crazy — threatening needless government shutdowns; insisting that Obamacare is the greatest assault on freedom since the Nazi march across Europe; failing to fix massive electoral liabilities, like your perceived hostility to Latinos —you may preserve your House majority. But it’s going to be damn-near impossible for a Republican to win the presidency.

— Noam Scheiber, writing in the New Republic, considers whether the threat by House Republicans to shut the government down over Obamacare is rational, albeit with perverse incentives.