¶ Now the Republicans find their divisions newly revealed in the raw. By exposing the party’s vulnerability to potent demographic shifts, the 2012 results have set the stage for a struggle between those determined to rebrand the Republicans in a softer light and those yearning instead for ideological purity.

But before acceptance comes denial. And the party’s first challenge, it seems in the immediate aftermath, is to find common ground simply in diagnosing the problem. Though some leaders argued that basic mathematics dictates that the party must find new ways to talk about issues like immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage, others attributed Republican losses to poor candidate choice, messaging missteps and President Obama’s superior political operation.

“We continually crank out moderate loser after moderate loser,” said Joshua S. Treviño, a speechwriter in George W. Bush’s administration who now works for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative group. He said Mitt Romney was part of a “pattern” of Republican nominees, preceded by John McCain, Bob Dole and George H. W. Bush, who were rejected by voters because of “perceived inauthenticity.”

By contrast, Ralph Reed, the longtime Republican strategist and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, said he would redouble efforts over the next four years to recruit women, Latinos and young people as grass-roots organizers.

“I certainly get the fact that your daddy’s Republican Party cannot win relying singularly on white voters and evangelicals alone — as critical as I believe those voters are to a majority coalition,” Mr. Reed said. “The good news for conservatives is there are many of those who have not always felt welcome in our ranks who share our values.”

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, hypocrisy, It's a big club and you ain't in it, rant, Republican Confederate Party

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Republican men, sexism, vote suppression

On Monday, Mitt Romney offered a remedy to the problem that caused his wife’s airplane to land prematurely last week: Allow passengers to roll down the airplane windows.

Ann Romney’s plane was grounded Friday after the main cabin filled with smoke. The small electrical fire caused no injuries, but apparently did cause the Presidential candidate to forget the dangers of altitude.

“When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly,” he told the LA Times. “And you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.”

Air crafts do not open windows because the cabins are pressurized to fly safely at an altitude of tens of thousand feet. Opening a window in an airplane would seriously sicken the passengers and crew.

Labels: American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Mitt Romney, Teh Stoopid

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax...my job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." -- Willard Rmoney, Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, assholes, Greedy Republican Bastards, It's a big club and you ain't in it, Mitt Romney

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, assholes, racism, Republican brownshirts

Labels: American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, just another outrage, morons, Republican men, Teh Stoopid, You can't make this shit up

Jeb Bush’s name keeps floating up in discussions about candidates to run on the ticket with Mitt Romney, despite Bush’s efforts to douse the talk.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says Bush would most help Romney.

“He’d be an outstanding pick. It’s up to Gov. Romney but if I had to recommend a single person it would be Jeb,” Graham told The Hill. Graham urged his party to unify behind Romney last month after Rick Santorum exited the GOP presidential primary. Graham is a close friend of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

Most of the focus has been on Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who are thought to be the leading contenders on Romney’s short list. But chatter is picking up on Capitol Hill that Bush could be a dark horse.

Senior political strategists think Bush could deliver Florida for Romney and help him among Hispanic and Catholic voters.

[snip] “I can’t conceive of Jeb Bush being the vice president of anything. I see him being a presidential candidate, not this go-round but in the future,” said Don Gaetz, the incoming president of the Florida Senate, who has been a friend of Bush’s for more than a decade. Gaetz said “having him on the ticket would be the best chance to carry Florida” but thinks Bush is more likely to take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s playbook and tour the country.

“He might follow the path of Ronald Reagan and travel the country, make more contacts than he already has — and he has many — and articulate his message of economic and educational reform,” said Gaetz.

Gaetz noted that Bush is often asked to endorse candidates and as he has done so his collection of political IOUs has grown, which would be helpful to a future presidential run.

State Sen. John Thrasher, co-chairman of Romney’s campaign in Florida and another Bush ally, said he does not think Bush would accept an invitation to serve as running mate.

“I know him pretty well and I take him at his word. He says he’s not going to do it. I think he’s serious about not doing it,” said Thrasher, who spent time on the campaign trail with Romney Thursday.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Bush family

Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times. But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr. Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right — but not in the way he intended. First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?

Labels: American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Mitt Romney, We Are So Screwed

Ive got no inhibitions
So keep your keys out of your ignition
I steal a car like I got the curse
I cant resist the old lady's purse
Jailbait you look so good to me
Jailbait wont you set me free
Jailbait you look fine fine fine
I know Ive got to have you in a matter of time

Well I dont care if youre just thirteen
You look too good to be true
I just know that youre probably clean
Theres one lil' thing I got do to you

Jailbait you look so good to me
Jailbait wont you set me free
Jailbait you look fine fine fine
I know Ive got to have you in a matter of time

So tell your mama that Im back in town
She likes us boys when its time to get down
Shes got this craving for the underage
I just might be your mama's brand new rage

Jailbait you look so good to me
Jailbait wont you set me free
Jailbait you look fine fine fine
I know I got to have you in a matter of time

Honey you you you look so nice
Shes young shes tender
Wont you please surrender
She's so fine shes mine
All the time, all mine mine
Its all right baby
Its quite all right I asked your mama
Wait a minute officer
Dont put those handcuffs on me
Put them on her and Ill share her with you

Labels: American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, assholes, batshit crazies, Mitt Romney, perverts, Republican id-driven two-year-olds

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:

An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, domestic violence, heartlessness, scumbaggery, The Republican War on Women

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, just another outrage, right-wing hatemongers, Ugly Americans

Mitt Romney yesterday praised former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying he would seek a running mate who shared many traits of longtime, and often controversial, political figure.

At a town hall meeting in a retirement community in Arizona, Romney was asked whether he would name a Tea Party person as his vice presidential nominee. He didn’t answer directly, instead saying that his “overwhelming critera” was that they be ready to become president.

“I think it was last weekend I was watching C-SPAN, and I saw Vice President Dick Cheney and he was being asked questions about a whole host of issues -- following 9/11, the affairs in various countries in the world,” Romney said, according to MSNBC . “And I listened to him speak and said whether you agree or disagree with him, this is a man of wisdom and judgment, and he could have been president of the United States.”

“That’s the kind of persona I’d like to have – a person of wisdom and judgment,” he added.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, batshit crazies, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, We Are So Screwed

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, humor, Ronald Reagan, taxes

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Are We Really Going to Do This Again, Rick Perry, That Man Is An Idiot

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, batshit crazies, Republican clown car

"We can certainly say between 2000 and 2008, I don't remember ANY terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during that period of time."

Labels: American Idiots, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, wingnuttia

A sweeping overhaul of Ohio's election laws passed the Senate on a party-line vote yesterday, and a bill requiring Ohio voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot is now on track to move next week.

After a day filled with heated rhetoric and shifting plans, majority Republicans pushed through House Bill 194, which moves the 2012 presidential primary from March to May.

The bill, which the House is likely to send to Gov. John Kasich next week after approving Senate changes, would let Ohioans register to vote or change their addresses online and reduce early voting from 35 days before an election to 21 days by mail and 17 in person - which eliminates the so-called "golden week" when people could register and vote on the same day.

Under the direction of GOP Governor John Kasich---himself the beneficiary of a dubious vote count in 2010---the Ohio Republicans are clearly determined to make it as difficult as possible for traditional Democrats to register, vote or get their votes counted in future elections.

Since 2000, the Republicans have eliminated more than a 1.5 million voters from the Buckeye state voter rolls. The purges have been centered on urban voters. Moreover, in 2004 hundreds of thousands of additional Ohio voters were disenfranchised by orchestrated bottlenecks at polling places that forced people to wait seven hours and more in line. The lines were most evident in the heavily Democratic urban areas of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

But in 2008, because the Democrats controlled the legislature and state house, voters were allowed to cast their ballots up to 35 days before election day. The lines disappeared. Polling places were voter-friendly, with election workers giving voters clear directions on how to proceed.

Now the GOP is intent on ending all that. Ohio HB 194 slashes the timeframe for early in-person voting from 35 days to 16. The new law also prohibits Ohio’s 88 counties from mailing absentee ballots to all voters, or to pay the return postage. (In 2004, thousands of absentee ballots never made it to the county boards of elections because they had a pre-printed space for one stamp when they actually required two, and most voters only put on one stamp).

The HB 194 law also prohibits local board of elections officials from designing systems that best meet the needs of their community. For example, it forbids the county boards of elections from setting up off-site early voting locations. Banning voter-friendly practices such as pre-paid postage for absentee ballots and convenient places for citizens to vote, the law mandates practices design to lower turnouts as much as possible.

In perhaps the Bill’s most shocking provision, pollworkers are prohibited from helping voters find the right precinct line at the polling site. They are actually barred from answering questions or providing directions to voters.

In the 2004 election, then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, directed that any voter in the right polling place but in the wrong precinct, could not have his or her vote counted. Prior to Blackwell, Ohioans would have had all of their votes counted in that case, except for the rare precinct-level vote which would usually be about alcohol sales.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio has written the legislature to ask: “Why else would we expend scarce taxpayer dollars on training and paying pollworkers? Ohio should not pass legislation that tells pollworkers not to do their job.”

HB 194 also overrides an the existing law---passed after the 2004 debacle---that required pollworkers to direct voters to the correct precinct. As the ACLU puts it: “Pollworkers will not be allowed to direct voters to the correct precinct or help them fill out forms correctly, both of which are required for a ballot to be counted. This will lead to more ballots that are not counted, and likely more lawsuits.”

The ACLU adds that HB 194 “…shifts responsibility for fair elections off of taxpayer-paid election officials whose job it is to administer elections, and on to the voters, who have a constitutional right to vote.”

The intent of Governor Kasich and the Republican-dominated legislature in Ohio is clear. Whatever minor detail they can find will be used to prevent Ohioans from voting. As the ACLU puts it, voters are "guilty until proven innocent, by assuming that all errors are voters' errors.”

In a separate bill---House Bill 159 (see Free Press Article) the Republicans will disenfranchise an estimated 900,000 Ohio voters, primarily Democrats, by requiring a photo ID to vote. Under the bill, an Ohio voter must produce either an Ohio driver's license, or an Ohio state ID card, military ID, or U.S. passport. IDs with photos and address provided by Ohio colleges or universities are prohibited as well as any ID provided by a county board of elections.

In a courageous move, Republican Secretary of State John Husted has come out against HB 159. In a speech to the League of Women Voters of Ohio, Husted said “I believe if you have a government-issued check, a utility bill in your name with your address on it, that no one made that up, they didn’t call AEP and establish utilities in their name to commit voter fraud. Let’s be clear about this. There are some other forms that are legitimate.”

The League of Women Voters, the American Association of Retired People of Ohio (AARP), Project Vote, and the ACLU all join Husted in opposing House Bill 159. But its passage seems all but assured.

And taken in tandem with HB 194 and the rest of the GOP assault on the ability of working Ohioans to vote, the day when Democrats had any chance of carrying any or all of swing state Ohio may be long gone.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

One of the more popular services at Solantic, the urgent care chain co-founded by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, is drug testing, according to Solantic CEO Karen Bowling.

Given Solantic's role in that marketplace, critics are again asking whether Scott's policy initiatives - this time, requiring drug testing of state employees and welfare recipients - are designed to benefit Scott's bottom line.

The Palm Beach Post reported in an exclusive story two weeks ago that while Scott divested his interest in Solantic in January, the controlling shares went to a trust in his wife's name.

This raised a groundswell of concern and questions about his health policy initiatives, especially his push to move Medicaid into private HMOs. Solantic does not take Medicaid but does business with private Medicaid HMOs. The questions are growing louder with Scott's executive order on drug testing.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, grifters

Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. “Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?” Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.

Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide.

Yet in a curious tale of Washington reinvention, the onetime congressman from Georgia is counting on the third Mrs. Gingrich for his political redemption.

As he prepares for a Republican presidential primary run — he said Monday that he would formally declare his intentions on Wednesday — Mr. Gingrich is presenting himself as a family man who has embraced Catholicism and found God, with his wife as a kind of character witness. Depending on one’s point of view, she is a reminder of his complicated past, or his secret political weapon.

Barely a sentence goes by without Mr. Gingrich uttering the words “Callista and I.” They are constantly together — at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, at conservative political conferences, at book signings and screenings of their documentary films. She is the voice on his audio books; her face is all over his 2012 Web site, where visitors can read “A Note from Newt & Callista.”

At Villanova University on a recent Thursday night, Mrs. Gingrich warmed up the audience for a showing of the couple’s movie about Pope John Paul II by signing books and DVDs in her left-handed curlicue. But when asked whether she is ready for the scrutiny a campaign would bring, she smiled tightly and grew silent.

Mr. Gingrich answered for her. “Seems to be,” he said, with uncharacteristic tentativeness. “We’ve talked about it for a year. It’s difficult.”

Mr. Gingrich is well aware that social conservatives are skeptical of him because he did not emphasize their issues in Congress, but also because of his two divorces and admission of infidelity. He has been meeting with religious leaders around the country to address their concerns.

Labels: 2012 election, And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, assholes, hypocrisy, just another outrage, Newt Gingrich, Republican brownshirts, You can't make this shit up