Day: February 25, 2008

Kitchen Debate Between Obama and Clinton Supporters Ends in Violence

Jon Ponder

If the victim had been a Bush supporter, this would be understandable on some level at least. But come on, guys, the policy differences between Clinton and Obama boil down to nuance. All we’re fighting about is which one will be easier for the Republicans to beat. There’s absolutely no need to come to blows:

Meet Jose Antonio Ortiz. The Pennsylvania man allegedly stabbed his brother-in-law in the stomach after the pair quarreled about their respective support of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. According to cops, Ortiz, 28, stabbed Sean Shurelds last Thursday night in the kitchen of an Upper Providence Township home. According to a criminal complaint, a copy of which you’ll find here, the 41-year-old Shurelds, an Obama supporter, told Ortiz that the Illinois senator was “trashing” Clinton (apparently in regard to recent primary and caucus results). Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, replied that “Obama was not a realist.” While not exactly fighting words, the verbal political tiff led to some mutual choking and punching. And, allegedly, a stabbing in the abdomen

H/t: KBMc

VoteVets.org Ad Opposes McCain’s Thousand Years of War in Iraq

Jon Ponder

About the ad:

Today anti Iraq war leaders, joined by former Senator John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth, announced the launch of a new nationwide, multimillion dollar campaign aimed at shining a light on the cost of war in Iraq. The $20 million campaign will include paid advertisements, lobbying Congress not to pass blank check funding bills, urging Congressional action to bar President Bush from making a long term commitment to Iraq that could tie the hands of the next president, and campaigning in key Senate states and House districts.

The Iraq/Recession campaign is a joint venture of MoveOn.org, the Service Employees International Union, VoteVets.org, USAction, the Center for American Progress and Americans United For Change.

GOP Trying to See How Far It Can Go In General Election Without Being Called Racist or Sexist

Trish

It’s easy to see why the GOP wants to avoid one thing more than any other in the general election campaign: “undisciplined messaging.” You say you don’t know what that is? Neither did I until Politico explained it.

Republicans know more than one election is at stake if they appear racist or sexist toward the eventual Democratic nominee. But since they really want to attack Obama for being black and/or Clinton for being female, it’s important to know where the line is and to stay just a hair this side of it.

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see…

…Republicans should expect a severe backlash if they say or do anything that smacks of politicizing race or gender. They didn’t need an expensive poll to learn that lesson, however.

Or maybe they did. Whereas you or I could just tap a coworker, neighbor, or — dare I say it — friend for some input, evidently your average Republican is just a bit more, shall we say, insulated.

“You can’t run against Barack Obama the way you could run against Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry,” said Jack Kemp, the 1996 GOP vice presidential nominee, who expressed concern that the party could be reduced to an “all white country club party” if it does not tread cautiously.

Reduced to an all white country club party? I thought they cultivated that image and wore it like a big, shiny Girl Scout badge on a sash slung over their jackets. And I’m not the only one who thought so.

Republicans interviewed for this story uniformly believe they will have to be especially careful. Many expect to be held to a higher rhetorical standard than is customary in campaigns, in part because of perceptions of intolerance that still dog the party.

“Fair or unfair, but that’s going to be a reality,” said GOP strategist John Weaver, a longtime confidant of John McCain. “The P.C. [politically correct] police will be out and the standards will be very narrow.”

Don’t you just love it when the people who gave us such terms as “faith-based initiatives” instead of “state-funded religion” and “low food security” instead of “hunger” and now, “undisciplined messaging” instead of “racism and sexism,” complain about the “P.C. police” (instead of “people offended by insults”)?

The real problem for Republicans is that they’re going to have to come out from the shadows this time and they don’t know how to make a case without insinuation meant to push fear buttons. Pointing out Clinton is a woman or that Obama fathered a black child is anticlimactic. What else you got, GOP?

GOP’s Roger Stone Launches Anti-Clinton Group, Citizens United Not Timid – C.U.N.T.’

Jon Ponder

Earlier this year, an infamous, though quite mainstream, Republican Party operative quietly launched a new anti-Hillary Clinton 527 group called Citizens United Not Timid — yes, it really is C.U.N.T. The notorious operative behind it is Roger Stone, a protege of Richard Nixon who is known for his trademark impeccable grooming, a facade that masks as thoroughly sleazy a character as any operating in modern politics.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Stone’s exploits, here’s a brief overview:

In 1996, he was forced to resign from his volunteer role on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign after tabloids tracked down sexy ads he and his wife, Nydia, allegedly placed on a swingers’ website. In 2000, during the Bush v. Gore recount, Stone was chosen by Bush family consigliere, former Sec. of State James Baker, to lead the fake “Brooks Brothers mob” riots in Miami. In 2004, Stone secretly helped Democrat Al Sharpton launch his insurgent presidential bid.

Last summer, Stone was accused of making anonymous threatening phone calls to the 83-year-old father of New York’s Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer. Listen to the message here, and here’s the transcript:

This is a message for Bernard Spitzer. You will be subpoenaed to testify before the [New York State] Senate Committee on Investigations on your shady campaign loans. You will be complelled by the Senate Sergeant at Arms. If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany. And there’s not a God damn thing your phony, psycho piece of shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up with you. You will be forced to tell the truth. And the fact that your son’s a pathological liar will be known to all.

(Emphasis not added.)

In December, Stone, who lives in Miami, made news by warning Florida’s popular bachelor (and preternaturally tanned) governor, Charlie Crist, that if he wanted to be vice president, Crist had better get married because, Stone said, “Bachelors don’t get selected for vice president.” Maybe these days they don’t but in fact, William Rufus de Vane King, the 13th vice president and longtime senator from Alabama, was a confirmed bachelor, nicknamed “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy,” who shared digs in Washington for a quarter century with James Buchanan, who later became the only bachelor to serve as U.S. president.

So that’s Roger Stone. Here’s Paul Kiel at TPMuckraker on Stone’s latest venture:

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