THE GINGRICH CAMPAIGN: PAST IS PROLOGUE

Does anybody else here find it incredibly ironic that Newt Gingrich is successfully running as the anti-Washington, populist candidate? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a man who bathes himself in hypocrisy is running on a platform completely antithetical to his record. But what is slightly disappointing (though, not so much surprising) is that the Republicans are actually buying his schtick. Remember, past is prologue.

Come on, people. The anti-Washington, populist who happened to have served in Washington for 20 years, during which he was embroiled in more than his fair share of scandals? Really? Ask Newt about check-kiting. Ask him about going after Clinton for Monica Lewinski while he was banging Calista behind his (then) wife's back. Ask him about shutting down the government (which despite what Republicans may think, is not a good thing) because Clinton forced him to sit in the back of a plane on the way to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral. Ask Newt about being the first Speaker of the House to be slapped with ethics violations for using a college course as a partisan playground and taking campaign cash in return for teaching "favorable ideas."  Oh wait, that's right. College is where the liberal elitists brainwash kids with their partisan ideals. And of course, let's not forget that after he torched every bridge he had, his own party tried to overthrow him as speaker and when the Republicans lost seats in the House in the 1998 election (largely due to his actions as Speaker) he finally resigned in shame. Anti-Washington populist? Wake up people and learn your history.

Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite and a scam artist. He made his money after his resignation from Congress by peddling his name he so dubiously earned during his tenure.  He rails about Fannie and Freddie being responsible for the economic crisis, yet has no problem taking a big fat paycheck from them. He buddied up with the Heritage Foundation when they called for an individual health insurance mandate, but now that the idea comes from Barack Obama, it's a socialist, fascist, commie, pinko policy. And while Newt may think it's absurd and shameful to be asked a question about his personal marital history, when you run with a socially conservative agenda, it's more than fair to have to answer questions about your own chronic infidelity issues.

All that aside, how can anybody stand to listen to this arrogant s.o.b. speak? This man's primary language is dog whistle and his litter responds to the same jaded rhetoric every time. I'm going to vomit if I have to hear any of the following phrases again:

Washington Elites        

Liberal Elites    

Media Elites                

Anti-Religious Bigot     

Saul Alinksy Radical                

Pro-American Campaign  

Food Stamp President

Newt never again has to answer a single question because all he has to do is make ad hominem attacks against the liberal media elites that are all just in the game to prop up Obama and take down all conservatives…(and the conservative crowd gives Newt a standing ovation). He accuses Judge Fred Biery, who upheld the establishment clause, of being an anti-religious bigot (let's ignore the fact that he went to college at a school associated with evangelical Lutherans and then got his JD from Southern Methodist).

A message to the religious right:

I understand that the crap you were brainwashed with as a child has impeded your ability to think with logic and reason and said upbringing has also created a vast propensity for you to accept fairy tales as absolute truth. So, for the umpteenth time, the First Amendment prohibits a government established religion while simultaneously providing for its free exercise. Government institutions (for example, public schools) cannot mandate prayer. However, they cannot stop you from exercising your right to practice your religion if it does no harm to anyone else. That's the beauty of the First Amendment. Government can't force you to practice the tenets of Christianity (or Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or Druidism, etc), but they can't stop you either. Your right to be a Christian does not preclude the right of others not to be.

Don't worry, though, elect Newt and every judge who disagrees with him will just be arrested. Talk about separation of powers. Why have a judicial branch of government when the executive can just throw any judge who dares to rule against its will behind bars? People who disagree with you are not anti-American. In fact, open disagreement is about the most American thing I can think of.

Moving on…The vast majority have never heard of Saul Alinsky, let alone Rules for Radicals (which, by the way, is a decent read), but thanks to Newt’s dog whistle I'm sure the mutts assume he's just another Bill Ayers type that Obama was pallin' around with back in his youth. For those of you not in the know, here are Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals:

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

If these tactics sound familiar it's probably because they're employed by politicians and organizations of every political affiliation. The only reason Alinksy pissed off the Republicans is because he happened to be a *GASP* community organizer (aka Commie Bastard). But I have two words for any conservative who wants to continue to claim Saul Alinsky's Rules are dirty pool: LEE ATWATER.
 

Finally we've got Newt's favorite dog whistle, the food stamp president. Obama is leading during the worst recession since the Great Depression. Of course people are in need now and at least part of the responsibility for that belongs to the economic policies of Ronald Reagan of which Newt so proudly touts being a part of. Trickledown economics created the vast and disgusting wealth gap that we're suffering today. And don't you think the fact that the Republican controlled House is doing everything possible to obstruct any bill that passes through its doors (unless that bill involves gaining more control over a woman's uterus) has something to do with the country being so slow to pull itself up out of the black hole of a recession that Reaganomics, deregulation, two unpaid for wars, American materialism, and idiots thinking they could afford a $500,000 house on a $35,000/year salary put us in?

Part of me doesn't believe that Republicans actually buy anything that Newt is saying. Part of me still wants to believe it's the last stand of the anti-Romney crowd and eventually Newt will fade off into the sunset. I know I said in a previous post that this Republican primary was the greatest show on earth, but now it's just getting kind of sad. For real, Republicans? This is the best you can come up with? I am here waiting for a reason not to vote for Obama again, but you just throw out religious wing nuts, hypocrites, spineless flip floppers who run away from their record (which isn’t so bad, by the way), and a crazy old man. Chris Christie--have you reconsidered your decision not to run (please)?

Yours,

Liz

No, Mitt, We Don't Want to Be You

See, now this is why I hate Mitt Romney. 

He represents everything that is wrong with both the public and private sectors of our country. His public sector problems go without saying—he’s a piece of plastic right down to the slicked back haircut and condescending grin. He changes his positions depending on the audience and when he’s called out for his obviously incongruous record he comes up with these reductio ad absurdum responses that never really explain himself and, instead, serve only to condescend to his audience.

How could you possibly think that was my position, you ignoramus? Now, Biff, drive around the limo and don’t forget the Gray Poupon this time.

Nobody in his own party can stand him. Some insist that it’s just the evangelical bigots who can’t get over the Mormon thing.  Others say it’s because he’s really just a Massachusetts liberal. But he’s neither conservative, liberal, nor moderate. People don’t like this guy because he speaks out of both corners of his mouth (and also largely from his ass). People don’t like him because they can’t believe a word he says. They can’t believe a word he says because they don’t even know if HE believes a word he says.

But back to this argument from envy. I’m so sick of hearing this people envy Wall Street, class warfare bullshit. Why are the rich so arrogant to think that everybody wants to be them? I picture Mitt waking up every day, grinning in the mirror after a hearty stretch, puffing out his chest, and saying, “My God, who wouldn’t want to be me?” Well, let me be the first to raise my hand.

While Bain Capital certainly wasn’t the worst of all private equity firms/venture capitalists out there (it doesn't solely specialize in private equity or venture capital), its hands certainly aren’t clean. Mitt Romney’s practice of “creative destruction” came at the cost of laying off workers, outsourcing jobs overseas where there weren’t pesky minimum wage or safe workplace standards, and bloating executive salaries while diminishing the salaries of the people who actually do the work that makes those executives fabulously wealthy.

And this was done at Bain’s greatest success stories. Bain capital fired people to make money…not just to survive…but to make massive sums of money. They destroyed people’s livelihoods not because they were bad workers or committed some egregious error, but so executives at Bain could go out and buy their new yacht or their third house out in Kennebunkport. This isn’t even to speak of the 22 percent  of Bain companies that went bankrupt or had to close its doors. But don’t worry, Bain still made its money and was able to hide some of its profits in offshore tax havens. 

That’s American Capitalism for you—risk and reward—the workers absorb all the risk while the investors run away with all the reward. Capitalism is a great system—WHEN IT’S ACTUALLY CAPITALISM and not when it’s some shadow of capitalism where the plutocrats are able to buy off politicians in order to pass favorable legislation for them and prevent the regulators and watchdogs from doing their jobs.

Points in case: 1. SEC failures to enforce rules which contributed greatly to our current economy and 2. The melee that ensued when politicians realized the CFPB would have teeth when Obama tried to appoint Elizabeth Warren. And all of this so the politicians and the rich can become masters of the universe together while the “regular people” are left to feed off of their crumbs.

So Mitt, no, I don’t envy you. If I have to destroy jobs, hide my profits in tax shelters, line pockets of executives who sit in offices all day and know very little about the people sitting in their trenches, mislead people about my record in order to win their votes, stuff my shirt, and muster my best toothy grin in order to be rich then I don’t want to be wealthy. Your money doesn’t make you any better than any one of the “little people,” and contrary to what you think, we don’t want to be you. We just don’t want to struggle to survive because your money allows you to rig the system.  

Google Santorum

I’ve got to admit that I’m a little sad today. I was busy saving lives last night at work but I found a minute to look up the results of the Iowa Republican Caucus during my lunch break. Now I don't think that the Iowa Caucus is a bellwether of the American public—or even most Republicans. Iowa as a whole, maybe. Iowa Republicans, no way.

However, that Rick Santorum won 25% of the vote and was able to come in second place by only 8 votes makes me very sad and it makes me sad for two reasons.  

First, it makes me sad that people are so easily brainwashed by the media that they're willing to vote in a presidential election for a guy who has made his name on bigotry and homophobia. The people know nothing about this man. They knew nothing about Michele Bachmann, they knew nothing about Rick Perry, they knew nothing about Hermann Cain, and they knew nothing about Newt Gingrich. All they knew was what the people in the talking box were telling them. Santorum got lucky that Newt's ride on the media bandwagon ended just in time for the Iowa Caucuses and he was the heir apparent to the anti-Romney throne. Hey Rick, congratulations, you're the conservative's last resort. Now the media is going to actually vet you and the public will see you for who you really are, you bigot.

The second (and primary) reason it makes me sad is because it shows that there is still a large portion of our population that are socially conservative ideologues. I’m not referring to the live and let live conservatives, but the ideologues who want to jam their religion down your throat--the ones who want to deny equal rights to gays because their religious ideals tell them gay is bad. I’m talking about the ones who want to control women’s uteruses and care more about a kid when it's a fetus than when it's an actual live child (until, of course, they reach military age-then they're much more useful).

Rick Santorum is a bigot who thinks his idea of “values” should supersede anybody else's "unchristian" value system. Yes, I said it-Rick Santorum is a bigot and if you think your religious ideals give you the right to trample on the rights of others' who do no harm to you then you’re a bigot, too. That’s another thing that annoys me. Why is the term “values” in this country synonymous with “Christian values?” You dig through the history of the church’s actions past and present and you’ll find that Christianity is very low on the morality totem. Christians most definitely do not have a monopoly on values. But if you want to know more about my feelings on religion then I refer you here: WARNING: Excessive Consumption of False Rhetoric Leads to Messed Up Worldviews. 

How can we take seriously a man who compared gay marriage activists to 9-11 terrorists? How dare we even consider a man who openly says that gay relationships are the equivalent to polygamy, incest, adultery, pedophilia, and bestiality? Why would you want a president who is openly disdainful toward single mothers seeking government help (forget his completely contradictory stances against contraception and sex education)? But, hey, when Glenn Beck says you’re the next George Washington, you must be legitimate. If you really want to know the true nature of this dufus looking a-hole, all you have to do is Google “Santorum.”

Don’t get me wrong, Rick Santorum isn’t going anywhere. He’s a Mike Huckabee and considering Rupert Murdoch’s endorsement, he’ll be back on Fox News sometime in the near future. He works for the loony tune evangelicals, but the American public won’t tolerate such an ignoramus once they learn who he is. It’s just disheartening to know that the God, Guns, and Gays demagoguery still holds clout with such a large segment of society.

Here’s my plea to sane Christian’s everywhere (I know you’re the majority): Please stop letting people like this represent you. Rick Santorum is one of the reasons why stereotypes have way more power than they should. Is Google “Santorum” really who you want people to think of when they hear “Christian?”

Successful societies always trend towards progressivism and giving more rights. This country’s no different, but unfortunately it isn’t a linear progression towards freedom. The road to freedom and equality has some bumps in it. We take steps forward and backward—we just have to hope the forward steps outnumber the backward ones.

I thought this country was more advanced in its thinking, but that Rick Santorum can be taken seriously as a presidential candidate makes me very sad that we haven’t moved beyond that kind of ignorance in many places. But, like I said, things always move toward progressivism—just at varying rates. America is a beautiful country, but sometimes we get a large, ignorant boil right on our ass that can only be treated with intelligence and insight.