Month: August 2011
Rove: Rick Perry Crossed the Line
You don’t accuse the chairman of the Federal Reserve of being a traitor to his country, of being guilty of treason and suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas.
— Karl Rove, quoted by the New York Times, ripping Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent criticism of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Romney’s Approach to Taxes: Tax the Rich but Keep Bush Tax Cuts
I’m not for tax cuts for the rich. The rich can take care of themselves. I want to get America working again. And so I want to make sure that whatever we do in the tax code, we’re not giving a windfall to the very wealthy.
— Mitt Romney, quoted yesterday in the Concord Monitor.
I do want to keep the Bush tax cuts in place.
— Romney, quoted yesterday in the Boston Globe.
Tea Party ‘Terrorists’ Hate Name-Calling, Except When They Do It
As he shook hands on a rope line during his tour of the upper Midwest, Pres. Obama was accosted by a pair of tea partyists, who berated him because they did not like being called “economic terrorists” during the debt ceiling debacle that their representatives in Congress engineered last month.
Rather than confronting them — “We’ll stop calling you economic terrorists when you stop taking the U.S. economy hostage,” he might have said — the president was much more polite, of course. Via David Weigel, here’s a transcript of the exchange:
TEA BAGGER 1: When you’re talking about civility, how is your vice president calling us terrorists…
OBAMA: Sir, sir…
TEA BAGGER 1: I would like to understand that!
OBAMA: Okay, I will explain right now. He did not call you guys terrorists.
TEA BAGGER 1: He said we were acting like terrorists. Hostage-takers.
OBAMA: No. What he said was that for us to be willing to take the economy to the brink was irresponsible. And it was.
This first tea bagger was referring to an exchange between Vice Pres. Joe Biden and Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, while the debt-ceiling negotiations were taking place:
The Line: Reax to Perry’s Threat to Lynch Fed Chairman
- Rick Perry on Fed Chairman Paul Bernanke: “I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas”
- James Fallows: “If Bernanke ‘prints money’ in the next 15 months, toward the end of forestalling a recession or preserving jobs, Perry would consider that ‘almost treasonous.’ This is the kind of thing you just don’t hear from national-level politicians, and for a reason. (For starters: the punishment for treason is death.) Obama looks better the more the Republican field displays its outlook and temperament. Romney looks better the more the anyone-but-Romney alternatives come into full view.”
- Former Bush operative Tony Fratto on Twitter: “Gov. Perry’s comments about Chmn. Bernanke are inappropriate and unpresidential.”
- Bushite Texan Karl Rove: “You don’t accuse the chairman of the federal reserve of being a traitor to his country. Of being guilty of treason,” Karl Rove told Fox News Tuesday. “And, suggesting that we treat him pretty ugly in Texas. You know, that is not, again a presidential statement.”
- James Galbraith, an economist and professor at the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs: “The fact that Rick Perry says something does not necessarily mean that he’s wrong, and that the institution has conducted itself in an impeccable way. The Fed allowed a great overstatement of its powers to become conventional wisdom. It pretended that [Quantitative Easing] QE1 and QE2 would achieve something substantial in the economy, when in fact it couldn’t.”
- Ta-Nehisi Coates: “It’s almost as if Obama has this mutant power to compel these guys into charging, full steam, into a wall of spikes.”
- Pres. Obama: “I think that everybody who runs for president, it probably takes them a little bit of time before they start realizing that this isn’t like running for governor or running for senator or running for Congress, and you’ve got to be a little more careful about what you say,” Obama said. “But I’ll cut him some slack. He’s only been at it for a few days now.”
- Andrew Sullivan: “To my mind, [this] statement disqualifies Perry from the race.”
- Neo-con Jon Podhoretz: “In the early going on Twitter, I suggested the harrumphers were knowingly making a mountain out of a molehill to bring him down a notch. I was wrong. He’s trying to be the next president, and he needs to be judged on that standard. What Perry did was make a thoughtless blunder, an unforced error; we’re now going to spend a couple of days discussing whether he was summoning violence on Ben Bernanke’s head or not, which is of absolutely no use to Perry. He is, or was, moments away from becoming the race’s frontrunner, and what is in his interest is to harness the excitement of his late entry with qualities of leadership and control that will rally the majority of Republicans unhappy with the choices facing them to his side. Rick Perry made that more difficult today; this was a serious rookie mistake on the national stage”
Chart Showing Where Presidential Candidates Stand On GLBT Issues
Ned Flaherty of Marriage Equality USA created this chart detailing where presidential candidates — including Republicans who have officially announced and Barack Obama — stand on issues relating to the gay community.
Starting in August 2011, a survey was delivered to the office of each active, formally announced candidate via e-mail, web mail, and/or facsimile, and also via certified U.S. mail for which a staff member signed a receipt confirming the delivery. Each candidate’s survey showed his or her latest stand on each LGBT issue, based on speeches made, documents signed, and interviews given. All candidates were invited to notify MEUSA of updates to their positions as they occur, up through election day on 6 November 2012.
The Texas Twins
When Rick Perry entered the race, he was in no rush,
Though he doesn’t care for Texan comparisons much.
But now that he’s joined the battle,
He’s looking like “all hat and no cattle” —
Kind of like a two-bit imitation of George W. Bush.
