There's a reason I call him "Dear Leader Rush"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Oh, by the way, did you see our recent post by Kathryn Rogers, Rush's fourth wife? If not, check it out. It's a must-read.)

George Will expressed it well on This Week yesterday to George Stephanopoulos:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has been inundated with criticism after calling Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University student who testified before a House committee about contraception, a "slut" and a "prostitute." But while Democrats have fiercely condemned the comments, Republicans' ire has been significantly more muted.

ABC's George Will told me Sunday on "This Week" that GOP leaders have steered clear of harshly denouncing Limbaugh's comments because "Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh."

"[House Speaker John] Boehner comes out and says Rush's language was inappropriate. Using the salad fork for your entrée, that's inappropriate. Not this stuff," Will said. "And it was depressing because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they're afraid of Rush Limbaugh."

ABC's Matthew Dowd suggested that Rush's influence is largely a "myth," but there's really no denying his lofty place on the right. And while some Republicans may indeed think of him as a "buffoon" and a "clown" whom "nobody takes... seriously," and while members of the Republican media elite like Will may scoff at him, he wields enormous influence not just because of his huge audiences of "dittoheads" but because, much like with anti-tax maniac Grover Norquist, Republicans are pretty much required to kowtow to him in order to prove their right-wing bona fides and receive his blessing. Sure, it's been possible to get ahead in the GOP without his blessing, but as the party has moved further to the right and more and more heretics have been purged, his position has only solidified.

And, too, it's pretty rich of commentators like Will to scoff and leaders like Boehner to use euphemisms like "inappropriate" in response to Rush's latest awfulness. Not to take anything away from his horrible remarks about Ms. Fluke, but he has a long, long history of sexist (like this) and racist (like this) and generally bigoted comments, and he's been able to get away with it without suffering much in the way of consequences from within the Republican Party or movement conservatism. Sure, he's had his detractors, and no doubt many have rolled their eyes at his various "inappropriate" comments over the years, but the fact that he's still so influential, still such a force on the right, says a lot about what is appropriate and what isn't for Republicans.

What Republicans have to fear

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Read Chait. Seriously, read this. In its entirety. Here's a taste:

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis -- that "freedom" is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care -- is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP -- the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes -- is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party's frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

That should put a huge smile on your face. Enjoy your day.

End of the world or just the Republican Party?

Guest post by tmcbpatriot 

Ed. note: His first guest post, on how it's about the vagina, stupid, was on Monday, and two days later we're running his second. I'm a big fan of his blog and we're happy to have him on board. -- MJWS

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tmcbpatriot's informative and always entertaining blog, Take My Country Back, emanates from somewhere out in the Midwest. He writes passionately and as often as possible about a confused, mindless right wing hopelessly lost in the abyss of endless lies and misdirection.

So I'm reading the news the other day and I see this: "Dick Cheney lobbied for Maryland gay marriage bill." I stared at it for a while in disbelief. Is the world ending? Did that pastor finally get it right? Then I did a Google search to find out just what the hell was going on.

We know from his Bush days that Cheney has a gay daughter. But as it turns out The Evil Emperor is also a huge supporter of gay rights! Yes, it's true! While it's hard to believe, and while Cheney has said he would never have gone against a Bush push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Cheney did publicly voice his disagreement with the idea back in the day. You can read about it here, here, and here.

The recent story has it that the Dark Lord lobbied GOP legislators in Maryland to "urge their support for the same-sex marriage bill that squeaked through the state's House of Delegates Friday." This was all too much for me to take in and it made me wonder, why are we reading about this now? News like this does not just happen by coincidence. This is really a big deal. How did this story make it into the current news cycle, a news cycle filled with anti-gay, anti-contraception, anti-women headlines? A news cycle that saw Rick Santorum become the frontrunner in the neverending campaign for the Republican nomination.

After giving it a think, I came up with three possible scenarios, laid out in random order... or are they? 

Scenario #1: Cheney is at death's door.

Darth Cheney has not been looking well recently. He looks gaunt, thin, a shadow of his shadowy self. And this is a man who has survived five heart attacks! Perhaps the time is nigh for him to return to the crossroads and pay the devil his due.

It got me thinking that maybe this Maryland gay lobbying thing is perhaps Cheney's last attempt to right all the wrongs in his gay daughter's eyes and to prove to her that he does in fact have a heart and a soul. I know, it's a long shot, but nevertheless...

Scenario #2: The GOP establishment REALLY wants Romney.

Let's be real for a moment. I don't care what the polls say or how few caucus voters actually vote for Mitt Romney. At the end of the day the GOP establishment is not as dumb as the people who vote for them. They live to see Obama voted out and they know that Rick Santorum has no chance of beating Obama in a general election.

Perhaps the Cheney gay lobbying story was leaked last week as a way to prove to the general voting public that conservatives are not as extreme as Santorum has been suggesting. If Santorum were to become the nominee, it would prove to so-called "independents" and especially to women that the GOP has in fact been taken over by the Tea Party.

While in most elections Republicans count on white, old, racist men and dimwitted suburban housewives at the polls, this past week we heard things like this: 

-- Rick Santorum on rape: "I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you. As you know, in lots of different aspects of our life we have horrible things happening. I can't think of anything more horrible, but nevertheless we have to make the best out of a bad situation. And that is making the best of a bad situation."

-- Rick Santorum on states outlawing contraception: "The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have."

-- Rick Santorum on sex in general: "I think the dangers of contraception in this country... It's not okay because it's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

This type of rhetoric plays great to the religious nuts, but telling women that your candidate thinks rape is God's gift to you? That is not a good plan for the Republicans to go with in any year. That said, Romney is still the only candidate who can compete over the long term. Sure, he is a horrible candidate, but as Grover Norquist said recently: "We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go." And when Romney is compared to Santorum he still has an ace in the hole with his choice for VP. My money has always been on Chris Christie, and Romney is the only candidate who could pull that off.

As John McCain said recently: “We’re dumb, but we’re not stupid.” So true, John, so true. 

Scenario #3: The GOP has seen its future, and it doesn't wear shades.

If you have been following this Republican nomination circus or just been paying attention to the last few years, you might be wondering if the Republicans plan for November is to simply hope for a landslide victory of white, male, rich, middle-aged, senior citizen, racist votes.

Let's also review what the GOP has taught us it hates this election season. The answers that quickly come to mind are health care, illegals (aka Mexicans, or anyone with dark skin in general), gays, abortions, environmental protections, the unemployed, the poor, anyone having sex, black people, Muslims, and, of course, black presidents. Did I miss anything/anyone?

Following this train of thought, what will the GOP look like in the next twenty years when the majority of our citizens are Latino, black, and/or Muslim? Or perhaps when all three are married to their same-sex partners? And provided global warming doesn't make New England into a tropical region, all those young hip northerners will eventually age and move southward for warmer climates. Goodbye, Southern Strategy. It is already happening.

In our world of political correctness, Occupy movements, and information from multiple sources 24/7, the GOP's go-to base of racist ignoramuses is inevitably going to give way to acceptance by a more tolerant and more skeptical society. When that happens, the GOP will be a quaint memory, like smoking on airplanes. And what about Latinos? You think illegal immigrants are all going to be kicked out of this country? Ha! Call me when an American citizen is willing to do the work that these poor people do for their pittance. We will scream and shout about illegals until the moment our food is not at the supermarket, our lawns are not mowed, or we decide that washing dishes for less than minimum wage is a respectable career. By then many of them will have either found a path to citizenship, or have had so many children while in this country who will grow up to not only vote but also be staunchly anti-Republican. Finally, last I checked we have a black president who is going to have a second term. Unless the GOP succeeds in its current effort of voter suppression, they will be, and are already, outnumbered. So you see, it's hopeless.

What, then, is the correct scenario? Who knows? It could be a little of all three. What is certain is that what we are now seeing within the Republican Party are baby steps. With the Dick Cheney revelation, the GOP is trying ever so slightly to get on board with an already unstoppable movement. It is a tiny chance for them to say they are not as hateful and intolerant as someone like Rick Santorum. It is a chance for them to say that one of their most beloved, and one of our most hated, Republicans supports gay marriage. In other words, "please stop supporting Rick Santorum... please!" Once that problem is solved, over the next twenty years they can get the gays to hate some other group, at least until they find a way to include the Mexicans, too. That may take a bit more time, though. Hell, it worked with the Irish and the Jews. Why should this be any different?

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital: destroyer of jobs, destroyer of lives

By Michael J.W. Stickings

*** Must-see video below. ***

It hardly matters whether Mitt Romney likes to fire people or not. What matters is his record. What matters is what he did at Bain Capital. And what he would try to do if elected president.

After all this time, with Romney not just the frontrunner but the likely GOP presidential nominee, his weakness appears not to be Romneycare, his health reforms in Massachusetts, but his work at Bain, where he made a lot of money, millions upon millions upon millions, buying up companies and tearing them down for profit, putting a lot of people out of work and destroying a lot of lives. As Politico explains:

Forget his specific rivals. The biggest threat to Mitt Romney is hitting now and set to fully detonate in South Carolina: It's the Bain bomb.

While conservatives look unlikely to unite around one alternative to Romney, the campaigns themselves are uniting around the theme that the former head of Bain Capital looted companies, tossed people out of jobs and is now exaggerating his success at the venture capital firm.

In other words, he was (and is) a capitalist -- profiting on the dark side of capitalism (capitalism not always being the fun and games its ardent and usually delusional right-wing adherents make it out to be). But what's crazy, given Republicans' general enthusiasm for capitalism, is that Romney's rivals (most of them now mere also-rans) are using his work at Bain, that is, his capitalism, to try to knock him off his perch. This includes, strangely enough, Newt Gingrich, never one to pass up a chance to make a buck, though perhaps nothing is strange in the shameless pursuit of votes, and Newt certainly has a long history of hypocrisy. As the Times reports:

Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist who destroyed jobs and communities, a full-scale Republican assault on Mr. Romney's business background.

The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold.

Note: a movie "financed by a Republican." You can watch the preview below.

Jon Chait writes that Gingrich is swift-boating Romney. That's not the right word for it. The swift-boating of John Kerry was based on lies, whereas these attacks on Romney, while certainly lacking nuance, are based on Romney's record.

Otherwise, though, Chait is right: "Newt Gingrich's new message assailing Mitt Romney is a remarkable breach of protocol" in that it violates the informal rule that "the closer a candidate gets to wrapping up the nomination, the more gentle his opponents must be in assailing him." In this case, the reverse is true: the closer Romney is getting to the nomination, the more vicious the attacks are getting (assuming that Newt actually follows through on this). We've been waiting for the anti-Romneys to turn their fire on Romney instead of each other. That now appears to be happening. And the damage to Romney could be enormous:

Politically, the ads are devastating to Romney, whose message against Obama is that he is a "job creator" who understands the private economy. The message of the ads is that his private-sector experience consists of looting companies and destroying the livelihoods of working-class people. The victims testifying in his ads are the working-class people who have suffered economic stagnation over the last three decades that was accelerated by the revolutionary changes to the economy of which Romney was at the forefront. (If you haven't already done so, read Ben Wallace-Wells's story on Romney, Bain, and the transformation of the economy.)

The political effect of these ads is to turn Romney's chief selling point into a liability – his private-sector experience becomes an indicator not that he will fix the economy but that he will help the already-rich. It's a smash-you-over-the-head blunt message, with ominous music and storybook dialogue. At one point, the narrator says of  Bain's executives, "their greed was only matched by their willingness to do anything to make millions in profits."

Chait also makes the case that Romney was just being a capitalist -- for worse, not for better:

He was in the business of creating wealth, not jobs. Capitalism increases a society's standard of living, but it does not increase its rate of employment...

Since we want to increase our standard of living, we want capitalism. That wealth benefits the whole society over the long run, but in the short run it can destroy lives and communities — which, of course, is one justification for the role of government in siphoning off a portion of the limitless wealth generated by the Mitt Romneys of the world in order to alleviate social dislocation. But the thrust of Romney's platform is that people like himself give too much already, and those left behind get too much. His self-presentation as a "job creator" is an attempt to paint over that ugly reality.

The huge wealth Romney created was for himself and others like him, not society. (And I'm not so sure that capitalism always creates wealth and always "benefits the whole society over the long run. It really depends what sort of capitalism is in place.) What's remarkable, though, is that it is Republicans who are now making the case that he wasn't a good capitalist:

Gingrich's assault relies on drawing a distinction between real capitalism and the "looting" undertaken by Bain Capital... The distinction is utterly ephemeral. It's a way of saying you'd like all the nice aspects of capitalism without the nasty ones – creating new firms and products without liquidating old ones.

I tend to agree with this. Such "looting," like it or not, is an essential part of the capitalist way. And Newt and others making the anti-Romney case with him are driving a wedge into the hyper-capitalist Republican Party.

Generally, a party of plutocracy like the GOP -- one that pushes for tax cuts for the wealthy, spending cuts to programs for everyone else, and the cruelty and brutality of free market absolutism -- would be happy with a multi-millionaire looter like Romney, but these times are weird. Now even Newt Gingrich is making sense and appearing to want to constrain capitalism with social justice (even if it's just a last-ditch effort to turn the tables on Romney).

Gingrich is hardly endearing himself to Republicans with this line of attack, but there's certainly a constituency even on the right that's receptive to such anti-elitism. It won't be enough to stop Romney in the primaries, but it will certainly help Democrats make the case against Romney in the general election campaign. Bloodthirsty capitalist looters, after all, generally don't go over all that well beyond the confines of the GOP, particularly at this time of economic uncertainty.

Ron Paul shows once again why he will never be the GOP presidential nominee

By Michael J.W. Stickings (@mjwstickings)

Via twitter: 

"Ron Paul says suggestion that Iran is pursuing nukes is 'war propaganda,' 'danger is overreacting.' Who thinks he can be GOP nominee?" 

-- Rick Klein (@rickklein)

No one with an ounce of sanity. Or at least no one with the slightest understanding of the Republican Party.

In the GOP, unfairly or not, Ron Paul is a freak show.

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Update: By the way, this is not to say that Paul's foreign/military views shouldn't be taken seriously, just that they're not taken seriously and are actually bitterly opposed by most of the GOP, particularly at the elite level (politicians, pundits).

I don't necessarily agree with his anti-interventionism (and anti-internationalism), which is really just isolationism (and hence irresponsible), but his views, which are the views of a fairly significant libertarian and paleo-conservative constituency on the right, and similar to the views of some on the left, where he has some admirers (for example, Glenn Greenwald), certainly should be part of the discussion.

For a good take on this, see this piece by Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic.

Dear Leader Rush defends Dear Speaker Newt

Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) has shared a Tweet with you:

"pwire: Rush Limbaugh defends Newt Gingrich against GOP Establishment attacks..." (link)

And this is why the so-called "establishment" doesn't mean what it used to. Karl Rove still has a great deal of influence in the Republican Party, as do some of Romney's more high-profile surrogates (e.g., Chris Christie, various figures on Capitol Hill), but Dear Leader Rush? Now there's some serious influence.

To whom do you think the base will listen? To whom do you think the base will turn for its marching orders?

If you think it's the "establishment," you don't understand how the GOP works these days.

Does Karl Rove matter anymore?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Turd Blossom and his ex-boss

"Veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove said Monday that the head of the Republican National Committee (RNC) should step in to 'discourage' presidential candidates from attending the upcoming debate moderated by Donald Trump," reports The Hill.

The recent rise of Newt Gingrich, the whole Herman Cain thing, the flirtations with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry over the summer, the popularity of Donald Trump as a possible candidate (way back when), the ongoing cult of Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney's deep unpopularity with the GOP base (even with Rove and the "money" backing him) -- all of these point to one thing: the impotence of what passes these days for the Republican "establishment."

Once upon a time -- actually not so very long ago -- the GOP was controlled by an establishment that, while undeniably conservative, was nonetheless pragmatic. Hence, at the presidential level, Reagan, Bush I, Dole, Bush II, and McCain, all electable candidates with broad appeal (Bush I lost re-election largely because of Perot, while Dole was running an unwinnable campaign against a popular incumbent in Clinton and McCain ran into the Obama juggernaut at a time when the Republican brand was, as it is still, garbage).

Once upon a time, a Karl Rove, and indeed Karl Rove himself, could have maintained control over the process and, with the snap of his fingers, shut down anything like this ridiculous Trump-moderated debate. But now that the GOP has shifted so far to the right, dominated by ideologues and moved largely by talk radio and Fox News, with propaganda flowing directly to the base and not through establishment channels (and mediators), with the Internet and social networking obviating the need for any such "establishment" to filter the communication between the politicians and their supporters, there's only so much he can do. And however much he may protest, it's not really up to him, is it?

Karl Rove still matters, of course. There's still a need in politics for organization, for ground campaigns and advertising and the like, but times have changed and no longer can he, and others at the "center," control the process or the party.

Hence Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Donald Trump. Hence the utter craziness of the 2012 Republican presidential race. Because, yes, what's going on now makes Rove look like a sensible pragmatist. And that's certainly saying something.

Republicans against Newt: The emerging campaign to destroy the Gingrich campaign

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, you had to know it was coming...

With Newt Gingrich actually threatening to take the Republican presidential nomination, the establishment, led by the likes of Karl Rove (who has previously taking it upon himself to destroy Rick Perry), is all set to do whatever it takes to knock him down. It'll be a trickle at first, a mild criticism here and there, a couple of harsh words, but then it will broaden into an all-out effort to make sure he doesn't win.

Cue "Pete" King:

When Representative Peter King called me between votes on Thursday afternoon to talk about his party's current presidential front-runner, Newt Gingrich, he joked that the conversation would ruin his day, but that he would "try to be even-handed."

He duly started out with the nice stuff.

"First of all, we would not have won the House back if it weren't for Newt," King said. "He did have a vision. We had that first 100 days with the Contract with America. We got through at least ten pieces of legislation. He certainly provided direction at the start."

But, King said, "The problem was, over a period of time, he couldn't stay focused. He was undisciplined. Too often, he made it about himself."

Whatever else you want to call King (supporter of terrorism, anti-Muslim bigot), there's no denying that he's a GOP establishmentarian, an old-school northeasterner with connections to the various moneyed interests that run the party -- or at least used to. And in going after Newt, giving him a warm embrace (he once did great things for the GOP) but then sticking the knife in (he's an egomaniacal maniac with no shot of winning the general election), he's clearly playing the role of establishment surrogate. Mitt Romney must have smiled when he heard this, if he wasn't in on it. He is, after all, the establishment pick.

As long as the Newt surge continues, as long as Newt remains a real threat to take the nomination, look for much more of this in the days and weeks ahead. (It's one thing for Ron Paul to run an anti-Newt ad, quite another, and much more dangerous for Gingrich, for the establishment to launch an anti-Newt campaign.)

The establishment is clearly scared shitless, and Newt's recent meteoric rise has made it piss its pants.