Month: November 2011
NBC’s David Gregory’s “Grand Wizard” Freudian Slip
David Gregory is walking back an analogous term he used during a Today Show interview, in which he said there is no “grand wizard” at the GOP calling the shots on the Herman Cain scandal. Gregory later tweeted, “”Wizard” remark this morning was a very poor choice of words. Did not mean to make that connection at all. Was not thinking. I apologize”.
In fact, Gregory’s comment was perfect. While he might have been visualizing the wizard in Oz, the term “grand wizard” is normally associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Considering the Republican and tea party embrace of the Koch Brothers-funded ALEC legislative goals of drug testing welfare recipients; making it harder for the poor and young people to vote, in violation the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and imprisoning people who came here illegally and denying an education to their children who are native-born Americans, it’s not a real reach to wonder if there aren’t Klan sympathizers in the Grand Old Party.
Pick the Right Name if You Want to Win in Politics
40% – 42%
The results of a Quinnipiac poll on the Florida Senate race. Rep. Connie Mack (R-Ft Myers) garnered 40% support while incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) got 42%. Name recognition was cited as the main factor in Mack’s popularity, since he is the fourth person to be named Connie Mack, starting with his Baseball Hall of Famer greatgrandfather. Mack IV is also the husband of Rep. Mary Bono (who gained her seat upon the death of husband Sonny Bono) but has done little of note in Congress, where he is Chair of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere within the Foreign Affairs Committee.
In Wake of Sex Harassment Charges against Cain, Poll Finds a Slight Shift Among GOP Voters to Disgraced Serial Adulterer Gingrich
In the mid-1990s, no political demographic was more outraged over Pres. Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs than Republican women. Their wrath, along with the moral condemnations of the GOP’s evangelical base, fueled the drive by their party’s elected leaders in Washington — led then by House Speaker Newt Gingrich — to do politically to the president what Lorena Bobbitt did to John.
Now, just 15 years or so later, and faced with charges that their party’s frontrunner, Herman Cain, has sexually harassed who knows how many of his female employees, Republican women take a different view. A CBS News poll finds that just 38 percent of them see the charges against Cain as a reason not to vote for him:
[Sixty-one] percent of Republican primary voters say the sexual harassment accusations against Cain won’t make any difference in their vote, but 30 percent say the charges make them less likely to back him, and that rises to 38 percent among women. Cain has lost support among women since last month – from 28 percent in October to 15 percent now. He has lost ground with conservatives and Tea Party supporters as well.
It gets worse for Cain:
Fewer Americans Insured
44.5%
The percentage of American adults with employer-based health insurance continues to decline in the third quarter of 2011 — the lowest since Gallup and Healthways started tracking it in 2008. More than 17% of adults were uninsured, tying the second quarter of 2011 for the highest on record.
Obama’s Approval Rising Among Independents
Andrew Sullivan, a former Republican-sympathizer who is now an independent, notes:
That’s a hell of a swing – from minus 21 to even in two months. And, remember, Obama does better against the actual Republican candidates.
It’s not, in my view, because Obama is performing well as a communicator. It’s because the GOP is revealing itself as unfit for governing responsibility. Once again, Obama’s opponents self-destruct. Of course there’s a long, long way to go, and Romney could beat Obama next year if he is the candidate and the economy dives after Europe swoons. But still: this is a pretty damning indictment of an opposition party when a president has a 9 percent unemployment rate and paltry growth. The last two months, as the GOP has put its candidates on display and as its congressional obstructionism has deepened, have been dreadful for the Republicans. Maybe they’ll learn after Tuesday’s votes. But maybe they can’t.
Cain’s ‘Princess Nancy’ Remark Unmasked His Mysogyny
Jonathan Chait on Herman Cain at the debate in Michigan:
At one point Herman Cain answered a health care question by referring contemptuously to Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy,” misogyny dripping from every syllable. In that one ugly phrase — and it was all in the delivery — he ripped the mask off his cornpone persona and revealed the ugly interior.
There’s something about the dismissiveness of it that seemed to strike women the wrong way. Consider the instant Twitter reaction of Dana Perino, the former spokeswoman for George W. Bush and a conservative in good standing: “Ay yi yi, former Speaker Pelosi called a princess in the debate? Not fair. We may disagree on policy, but she earned the Speaker title.”
Herman Cain says he ‘probably shouldn’t have said Princess Nancy’ during the latest presidential debate. Ya think?
…But that’s where the modern day GOP is. This is the party of Rush Limbaugh, who grossly mispronounces one of the Cain accuser’s name, and throws in some slurping sounds just to up the hurl factor … It’s the party of John Derbyshire, who says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they’re too soft hearted and let Democrats get elected. It’s the party where women like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter make money bashing fellow women for daring to stand up to sexual harassers like Clarence Thomas and apparently, Herman Cain, and where meanness and downright nastiness is what is most valued in a female commentator (look at who rises to the top on the right: Coulter, Ingraham, Michele Malkin…)
