Year: 2012
Gingrich Farewell Speech to Iowa: I Will Destroy Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich may be the nastiest politician to hold office in the modern era. Assuming he can muster the discipline and focus (and money) to follow through on the threats against Mitt Romney he made after losing the Iowa caucuses last night, the Republican presidential race is about to go to a very dark place.
In part, he said:
Most Meaningless National Election Ever
In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event — the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.
— Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, asserting that the 2012 presidential race has lost its “elemental appeal” and “may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had.”
Perry Equates Obama Admin to Nazis? Campaign Over!
This election is about stopping a president of the United States and his administration that is abusing the constitution of this country, that is putting America on a track to bankruptcy. It is a powerful moment in Americans’ history, and you are on the front lines. This is Concord. This is Omaha Beach. This is going up the hill realizing that the battle is worth winning.
— Rick Perry, comparing the GOP’s efforts to defeat President Obama “to one of the deadliest battles of the D-Day landings in Normandy in 1944,” NBC News reports.
Santorum to Obama: ‘Man Up’
If you want to be president, man up and be president.
— Rick Santorum, quoted by BuzzFeed, saying President Obama makes excuses instead of leading.
Republican Enthusiasm Is Waning
123,000
Of 640,000 registered Republicans in Iowa turned out to vote yesterday, along the lines of 2008, when dueling Democrats absorbed most of the electoral energy — an ominous sign for the GOP after the Tea Party-driven enthusiasms of 2010.
Romney-Santorum Split Decision in Iowa a Defeat for the Tea Party
While both the Romney and Santorum camps can claim bragging rights as they head for New Hampshire, Dave Weigel suggests that the results from Iowa reveal one big, unambiguous loser:
Republicans Admit That They Have Sabotaged the Economy So That Obama Will Fail
In other words, congressional Republicans have screwed their own constituents in order to ensure that Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum will be elected president this year
Obama had barely been sworn into office before the national Republican leadership mounted a concerted and determined effort to prevent any of Obama’s solutions to our severe national problems from passing, even as they openly declared they were doing so only to destroy him politically. Republicans have admitted on the record that deliberately denying Obama any bipartisan support for, well, anything at all was absolutely crucial to prevent voters from concluding that Obama had successfully forged ideological common ground over the way out of the myriad disasters Obama inherited from them.
While it’s true that disapproval of Obama on the economy is running high over government’s failure to fix the economy, the independents and moderates who will decide the presidential election agree with Obama’s overall fiscal vision — his jobs creation proposals and insistence on taxing the wealthy to pay for them. They also recognize that Republicans are more to blame than Dems for government’s failure to implement those proposals. But as Steve Kornacki recently noted, blaming Obama for failing to transcend politics as usual despite determined GOP opposition may be the best way to give indys and moderates a reason to vote against Obama even though they generally agree and sympathize with him. And so, after doing everything in their power to prevent Obama from successfully transcending partisanship and achieving transformative change — even if it meant repeatedly opposing solutions to profound national problems they once embraced — Republicans will now attack him for failing to transcend partisanship and achieve transformative change.
Frothy Bigot Santorum Incorrectly Asserts That Most Welfare Recipients Are Black
I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families. The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.
– Republican Party presidential frontrunner and infamous bigot Rick Santorum speaking to a presumably all-white audience in Iowa, ignoring the fact that the percentage of black, white and Hispanic families on welfare is roughly the same: 33.3 percent of the families are black, 31.2 percent are white and 28.8 percent are Hispanic.
Ixnay On Ioway
As the Iowa caucases finally get under way,
We momentarily reflect on the great state of Ioway —
It’s too evangelical, too white,
Way too rural and too uptight.
So who — besides a half-dozen Republicans — really cares what happens there today?
