Weak Tea?
[ Posted Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 – 17:33 UTC ]
Is the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party becoming irrelevant?
Archive of Articles for February, 2012
Toxic Gas At Romney Hotel
[ Posted Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 – 17:42 UTC ]
Which is why I'm scratching my head today at the absence of headlines like the one at the top of this article in the national media. While the actual facts of the case are pretty mundane, the juxtaposition of a major presidential candidate would have allowed for even more sensationalistic headlines than mine (it's easy to come up with a "screaming banner" for the story, one would think).
Primary Season Amnesia
[ Posted Monday, February 13th, 2012 – 17:37 UTC ]
The primary season opens with so many Republican candidates for the party's nomination for president that it seemingly takes forever just to ask each of them a single question in the televised debates. Three different Republican candidates win the first three states' races, in a wide-open contest with no incumbent on the ballot. The first results thin the large field of hopefuls, as minor candidates run out of funding and throw in the towel. As more states vote, the two top candidates get to a point in early February where they are neck-and-neck in the number of individual states won -- with the third candidate lagging, because his support is based mostly in the South. Ron Paul is also running, but not winning any states. Dark mutterings are heard about the presumed-frontrunner not being able to "close the deal," and about his overall weak support among conservatives in the party. The media is in a frenzy, all but drooling over the prospect of an open convention, where no Republican candidate has the magic number of delegates to secure the nomination.
Friday Talking Points [197] -- White House Fumbles
[ Posted Friday, February 10th, 2012 – 17:02 UTC ]
In other news, the Obama White House had rather a bad week... but again, we'll get to that in a moment.
Contraceptive Debate, Part 2
[ Posted Thursday, February 9th, 2012 – 16:59 UTC ]
Mainstream American churches have, in the past, used Biblical passages to advocate the rightness of slavery. Mainstream American churches have also refused to allow blacks to join their congregations with the same status as white worshippers. Mainstream American churches have used the Bible to justify wife-beating, and corporal punishment for children. That is all fine and good (well, it's not, really; but it's legally all fine and good) -- the Constitution does not permit government to have any sort of sway over a church's beliefs in any way (except possibly if the church were mounting armed resistance to the government and calling it religion).
Contraceptive Debate Reporting Omits Important Voices
[ Posted Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 – 15:29 UTC ]
You know what I have yet to see either on television or in print? A poll of the workers affected. Maybe that's too tough a thing to ask for -- polls are time-consuming, after all, and the debate hasn't been raging all that long. But I have also yet to see in the media even a single woman interviewed who actually works for a religious hospital or university. Not a single "woman on the street" interview, not a single union representative who speaks for these women, not a single spokesperson for the women themselves. Not one. No nurses, no janitors, no administrators, no security guards... nothing.
Name That Tuesday!
[ Posted Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 – 15:55 UTC ]
Today is the first multi-state event in the 2012 Republican primary schedule, and I am shocked -- shocked! -- that the punditocracy has miserably failed to come up with a cutesy-poo name for today's voting.
Romney's "Very Poor" Choice Of Words
[ Posted Monday, February 6th, 2012 – 16:31 UTC ]
Mitt Romney's gaffe last week (reproduced in full, above) is going to wind up the "gaffe that keeps on giving" for Barack Obama and the Democrats in this election cycle. Because the more Romney's comment is examined and dissected, the worse it looks for him. This could, in fact, be the defining moment for Mitt Romney as a national political presence. That phrase is often bandied about in politics, but I use it here in the full literal sense of "defining moment" -- a point in time which absolutely cements an image in the public mind of who you are and what you stand for as a politician. The image, quite obviously, is not a good one for Romney.
Friday Talking Points [196] -- Poor Mitt?
[ Posted Friday, February 3rd, 2012 – 17:10 UTC ]
Mitt Romney, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, announced he wasn't too worried about poor people. Maybe it would be fun to see Romney debate Joe Biden, just because nobody would know what to expect from either of them. Heh.
GOP PUMAs?
[ Posted Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 – 18:17 UTC ]
The thought which keeps flitting through my mind is whether the Republicans are going to face their own "PUMA" problem this fall. For those who don't remember the term from 2008, PUMA stood for "Party Unity, My Ass!" and was the rallying cry of the non-existent hordes of pro-Hillary Democrats who were reportedly going to cause major disruption at the Democratic National Convention, and then throw the election to John McCain in the fall.