Rick Santorum has grabbed the President Obama’s war on religion narrative and has choked the life from it.  Santorum may prove to be more adept at scoring points from this talking point than Mitt Romney.  It’s his strength as the principled religious conservative in the race.  But this play will only work with conservative evangelicals, not the broad swath of support he would need in a general election.  One of the reasons Santorum is unelectable.

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Newt Gingrich’s efforts to cast himself as the white knight, cleaving through the murk of blacks leeching off government, exposed more than the seedy opportunistic side of  politics–It laid bare an electorate fueled by racist mores.

The interesting part about being a racist is the not so subtle manner in which you promote your racist dogma.  Most racists don’t believe they’re being anything other than truthful… denying the invocation of  racist diatribes creates a protective cloak against which repudiation rarely penetrates.  In fact, the views of the accusers are seen as more unpalatable than the accused’s invective.

Racism is itself as insidious and ingrained as lying.  As Coates puts it, “The habit of lying does not end with the racism itself. It is a contagion that extends to the defense of the initial lie.”  To wit:

People who are regularly complicit in wrong, are not in the habit of admitting such things. The unwillingness to admit wrong, the greedy claim upon the powers of disappointment,  the deep sense of injury is not coincidental–it is a necessary fact of wrong-doing. The charge that the NAACP are the actual racist is the descendant of the notion that abolitionists wanted to reduce Southern whites to “slavery,”  that the goal of civil rights was the rape of white women.That Barack Obama would have a “deep-seated hatred of white people” is not a new concept.

Those that commit acts of wrong doing never admit to the act because they are in fact not wrong–at least in their mind.  Their business is all about proudly basking in their racism– totally unfettered.  It is an inherent trait that fuels their ambition.

Newt Gingrich’s goal is gaining the republican nomination for presidency of the United States, and those people in South Carolina weren’t just acknowledging a gotcha moment from moderator Juan Williams– or a deft retort from Gingrich–they were proudly reaffirming their own racist reality.   The promulgation of racist narratives isn’t incidental, it’s coolly calculated strategy–and to many, a way of life.  That much is now apparent.

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photo credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

There may be a price to pay for intransigence.  Because of a deliberate attempt at self-sabotage by congressional republicans, an inability of Speaker Boehner to reign in tea party freshmen, and the likelihood of a substantial tax increase on more than 160 million Americans–something conservatives would normally consider anathema–they find themselves on the wrong end of poll numbers.

Given the need to bolster the economy, something only the President has seemed willing to do so far, Obama has made significant strides with the public on the country’s most pressing issues:

Obama’s gains have come at the expense of the Republicans in Congress and the GOP in general. By a 50% to 31% margin, people questioned say they have more confidence in the president than in congressional Republicans to handle the major issues facing the country. Obama held a much narrower 44% to 39% margin in March.

And the GOP’s overall favorable rating has dropped to six points, to 43%, since June, while the Democrats’ positive rating remained steady at 55%. “The Democrats do particularly well among middle income Americans, while the Republicans win support only from the top end of the income scale,” adds Holland.

Perhaps the strategy of congressional republicans is to continue its abject stonewalling, lest they risk making the economy better right before 2012 elections.  Politics before country doesn’t sound like a sound, winning strategy to me.  In a divided government, absolutism is the wrong play.   If their intended result was to achieve historically low congressional poll numbers, mission accomplished.

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Ron Paul is now leading in Iowa.

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A portend of things to come?  Jeffrey Toobin weighs in:

In 1964, Republican insurgents seized control of the party. They recognized that their views were not held by a majority of Americans—at least not yet. As Rick Perlstein wrote in “Before the Storm,” his fascinating history of the Barry Goldwater campaign, the Republican Party was taken over by “a little circle of political diehards whose every move was out of step with the times”—which did not bother them much at all. For their moment, they were political missionaries who came to introduce a nation raised on the New Deal to an alternative approach to governing. Goldwater embraced “extremism” in the fond hope that its time, if not his time, would come. Goldwater and his aides didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about “electability.” They didn’t expect to win, and, emphatically, they did not. Lyndon B. Johnson won sixty-one per cent of the popular vote, and carried forty-four states.

Republican zeal to recapture the White House may not be analogous to their attempts to re-brand their party.  It seems many don’t care.  This will be fun to watch.

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It’s one thing to disagree on a particularly divisive issue–it’s entirely something different to engage in haughty, disreputable politics.  Mitt Romney’s shameful display not only reinforced his strained attempts at humanizing his candidacy–it showcased an utter lack of political savvy and genuine compassion.

At an event that was meant to highlight the endorsement of Romney by Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas, veteran Bob Garon of Ebson, N.H., asked the presidential candidate, who stopped by his breakfast table, whether he supports the repeal of the New Hampshire same-sex marriage law. A Republican-controlled legislature has moved toward repealing the law, enacted in 2009 when Democrats controlled the legislature.

A vote could come next month. Romney told Garon, who was chowing down on his everyday staple of scrambled eggs and shaved ham at the restaurant Chez Vachon, that he supports a repeal of the same-sex marriage law, prompting an emotional exchange.

“I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman,” Romney said, joining Garon in the diner booth after shaking hands with several other patrons. Garon responded, clarifying that what that meant was that if Romney is elected he would not support any legislation that would change the law so that gay servicemen would get the same benefits as heterosexual couples.

“I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “We apparently disagree on that.”

Romney’s problem here is two-fold:  How legitimate is it to ask people to fight and die for a country that tries to disenfranchise them?  Romney may think he shrouds himself in the cloak of the constitution, but he only weakens his hand by subscribing to a distorted reading of that document.  I wonder how the Constitution views polygamy, a practice often associated with his Mormon faith?

Second is the more concerning human element to this story.  While Romney and Mr. Garon disagree on this subject, a prospective candidate for the highest in the land should offer more than just rote babble about constitutional practices.  Why not salute this man for his service to the nation?  Why not ask him about his tour or how he met his partner?  It may seem trite but for a man like Romney, often portrayed as a generic automaton in a Brook Brothers suit, it may have gone a long way in re-tooling his image.

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This video leaves little doubt as to what type of campaign President Obama would wage against republican nominee Newt Gingrich.  It’s brutal tone is only matched by its reality.  No matter how much Newt professes to be the outsider with a spine of steel, his actions and words always belie that.

The president isn’t losing sleep over  Mr. Gingrich, nor should he.

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This is remarkable.

The quote of the day:

It’s unclear whether Cain’s candidacy is just part of his book tour, part of an effort to land a Fox show, or some sort of mere vanity project. But whatever it is, it is not a serious presidential campaign. Cain hasn’t earned the right to be taken seriously, because he hasn’t approached the task of being a presidential candidate with seriousness.

This sums up what Cain is about.  His lack of clarity and seriousness proves he’s all about selling books and increasing awareness for his radio show.  His focus lies with becoming the next Sean Hannity, not the next president.  He should stop wasting everyone’s time and energy and call Roger Ailes today.

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photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 economic plan continues to get panned (pizza pun intended) by economists and even conservatives.  On the surface it seems like a blatant hosing of the poor, by shifting the tax burden more heavily upon their shoulders in order to create tax equity.  Cutting beneath the surface, Cain’s plan is simply a nod to campaign-speak– rallying his tea party troops with a dizzying amount of platitudes and talking points.  The idea of eliminating the tax code is a sound one, provided you have a substantive policy to use as its replacement.  Clearly, this is not it.  It’s more of a slogan.

Ezra Klein points out the plan’s potentially damaging effects on a key base of support for the GOP as well:

This plan wouldn’t work. Not as policy and, as I expect Cain will soon find out, not as politics. Moving to an 18 percent consumption tax is, among other things, very bad for older voters, who make up a substantial portion of the Tea Party base.

Jacking up taxes on the poor and the middle class even as you sharply reduce them on the rich and completely eliminate them on overseas income for corporations isn’t popular among anyone in the political system who isn’t specifically paid by the Club for Growth. The 9-9-9 plan is a great slogan. But the more seriously Cain gets taken, the more seriously the plan is going to get taken. And as that happens, it will soon become clear that it’s very poor policy.

Alas, more gimmickry from the only black man in America who hasn’t been brainwashed.  Perhaps a dunk in the tank is in order.

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I don’t know if Fox has ever reported on anything accurately.  Their journalism reflects their propensity to give their viewers what they crave rather than report the news.  That’s not a news organization, that’s a reality show.

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