Month: September 2011

Obama Admirers Toggle Between Being Uplifted and Feeling Used

Buck Banks

When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them… When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill… This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible … The White House gives moderates little morsels of hope, and then rips them from our mouths. To be an Obama admirer is to toggle from being uplifted to feeling used.

— David Brooks, writing in the New York Times.

Bachmann’s Polling Implodes – Did She Tell One Lie Too Many?

Jon Ponder

A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that support for the presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is imploding:

The survey, taken Thursday through Sunday, charts a GOP field that seems headed toward a showdown between Perry, with 31 percent backing, and Romney, at 24 percent.

The only other candidate in double digits is Texas Rep. Ron Paul, at 13 percent. Support for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has plummeted to 5 percent.

Veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who resigned as Bachmann’s campaign manager earlier this month, says the results could signal “a drawn-out process” and extended primary fight between Perry and Romney, both of whom are likely to have ample money and other resources.

But for Bachmann, he says, “The only way she can get back in this race is to somehow win Iowa,” which holds the opening caucuses early next year.

It’s hard to know what has caused the collapse of Bachmann’s polling. It may well be that her base of hard-right, proudly ignorant Republican voters found that they prefer Texas Gov. Rick Perry over her because, well, he’s a man and she is not.

It’s also possible that she got caught telling one lie too many.

[…]

After You

Trish

So one of the new talking points to combat the higher tax rates for millionaires is this line: “If Warren Buffett thinks he should pay more taxes, he should write a check.” Sounds good. But is that how we’re doing it now? If you propose something, you have to go first? If so, then there are a lot of chickenhawk, eager-to-wage-war politicians who should probably drag their asses over to the frontlines of Afghanistan.

Scott Maxwell, Orlando Sentinel columnist, commenting on Facebook

Breitbart Claims the U.S. Military Would Back the Tea Party in a Civil War on Liberals, Unions

Jon Ponder

Towleroad:

At a tea party function in Boston, a sweaty, pacing, unshaven Andrew Breitbart says he sometimes dreams of civil war.

Breitbart is manic and occasionally incoherent in the video. He says he has been driven to violent fantasies about liberals only because he has been victimized by them. “‘Cuz I’m under attack all the time,” he says, citing an incident or incidents when “the tolerant call[ed] me gay” on Twitter. And, oh yeah, he gets death threats.

The left would like to initiate the war against him, he says, but they won’t because they know the U.S. military would side with him and the tea party. “I have people who come up to me in the military,” he says, “major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’ And so they [liberals] understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know.”

Transcript:

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Perry’s Job-Creation Record Not Looking So Hot

Buck Banks

8.5%

The current Texas unemployment rate, which has reached its highest level since June 1987 the Austin American-Statesman reports. The continued losses are a result of a shrinking public sector, as the private sector continues to create jobs. While the rate is below the national average, the rising unemployment level in the state could harm Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) efforts to tout his success at job creation in the Republican presidential primary.