Ronald Reagan Must Be Spinning In His Grave But Will Trump Cost The GOP Congressional Seats? In Utah?

Utah is a very red state-- but it isn't exactly a Trump red state. The PVI is R+20 but in 2016 Trump only wound up with 45.5% of the vote. That's right More Utahans voted against him than for him. Hillary won the biggest county in the state, Salt Lake-- 175,863 to 138,043 (with McMullin pulling 79,880. Shocking as it may sound to people who aren't aware of Utah politics, Trump only took 33% of Salt Lake County. and in the 4th Congressional district-- where incumbent Republican Mia Love is considered vulnerable in November, Trump pulled 39% of the vote. Now that he's president, he's even less popular than he was in 2016. His popularity has sunk precipitously.

Robert Genrke, a columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune is no Trump fan to begin with. His column Tuesday was addressed to Utah favorite son Jon Huntsman, who served as ambassador to China under Obama and who Trump appointed ambassador to Russia in 2017. The paper's owner and publisher is Paul Huntsman, brother of Ambassador Huntsman. Salt Lake's Fox affiliate asked if Huntsman would resign after the Señor Trumpanzee contradicted his assessment of Russia as a "malign" actor on the world stage? Huntsman assessed the Kremlin on Fox News Sunday: "trying to influence other elections, not only our own but those in Europe, tampering with the Brexit vote, funding nefarious political movements within Europe. The list goes on and on and on." His daughter Abby, an anchor on the Fox News Channel told him that "No negotiation is worth throwing your own people and country under the bus."

Gehrke's column, Come home, Ambassador Huntsman, your country needs you, is what everyone in Utah is talking about. Gehrke addressed him directly: "Ambassador Huntsman, you work for a pawn, not a president. It’s time to come home."

As Utahns, many of us were a bit stunned last year when you accepted the job as U.S. ambassador to Russia, but your explanation made sense: It was a role you took on, much like your tenure in China, out of a deep sense of duty.

But that duty is to your country and the best way now to serve your country is not by holding on to some title and being the emissary of a president who doesn’t share your values, or American values, for that matter.

It’s by resigning immediately and speaking out against a president who attacks our allies, gives comfort to our adversaries and undermines our moral standing, our commitment to democratic ideals and our interest in human rights every time he opens his gaping mouth.

For Trump to simply accept at face value Putin’s assertion that Russia played no part in the plot to meddle in U.S. elections is a tragic disservice to the U.S. intelligence community, those diplomats who work in your office, and the integrity of our democracy and justice system.

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people,” Trump said (which he has demonstrated again and again is a lie). “But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

Was his denial stronger and more powerful than the unanimous assessment of the entire U.S. intelligence community-- the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the director of national intelligence-- as well as the Senate Intelligence Committee, which all agree Russia meddled in the elections??

Was it stronger than the charges laid out in shocking detail just three days ago by Trump’s own Justice Department that a dozen Russian military and intelligence agents orchestrated the hacking of Democratic computers, compromised election offices and stole voter data, and worked with WikiLeaks to release damaging information?

...Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave.

Mr. Ambassador, members of your own Republican Party are condemning Trump’s shameful sellout of our country.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) said Putin “gained a tremendous amount” from Trump’s validation. “I would guess he’s having caviar right now,” Corker said.

“I would never thought I would see the day when our American president would stand on the stage with the Russian president and place blame on the United States for Russian aggression,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

Your friend, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the soccer ball Putin gave to Trump should be checked for listening devices and never allowed in the White House.

...To remain silent and continue to serve this president would be complicity in the undoing of our nation and its status as a world leader.

Come home, Mr. Huntsman. Your country needs you.

Mia Love's district includes the southern part of Salt Lake City plus the city's southern suburbs, like West Jordan, South Jordan, Riverton and shoots south through Lehi and Nephi as far south as Moroni, Spring City and Yuba Lake. She and Blue Dog Ben McAdams are all tied up in the money-raising race. As of the June 30 FEC report she had $1,233,151 in the bank and he had $1,249,035. And in the latest polls they are in a statistical tie. Will Trump hurt Love's reelection chances. McAdams told the media that he joins "Utahns of both political parties in expressing my frustration over what transpired in Helsinki. By interfering in our election, as all of our intelligence agencies have concluded, Russia attacked our country and our ideals. While we must find a way to live with our enemies, we should never confuse our adversaries with our allies. And we must resist Russian attacks with all the tools at our disposal. Democrats and Republicans should stand shoulder in this. Patriotism knows no party."

Love, like Republicans in tight races everywhere in the country, was clearly on the defensive and unable to defend Trump. In fact, she went as far as she could to distance herself from him: "Despite what was stated at today's summit, there is no question that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Both the Intelligence community and the House Intelligence Committee have demonstrated that fact. Unfortunately, Russia continues a long and persistent track record of hostility towards our nation and values. There's a reason that I, as a Member of Congress, have consistently voted to sanction Russia for its behavior. President Trump must understand that the world counts on our nation to set the tone and hold thugs accountable. Today he failed to do so."

Democrats Protect Social Security, Right? Well... Not THESE Democrats

A small gaggle of greed-obsessed billionaires and multimillionaires are financing another of their endless attempts to wreck the most successful and beloved social safety net programs in history, Social Security. Greed-obsessed billionaires and multimillionaires have always hated Social Security and even tried fomenting a coup d'état against Franklin Roosevelt for signing it into law. Of course, all the plotters were conservatives, including Irénée du Pont, J.P. Morgan and, of course, Nazi sympathizer Prescott Bush. Today, Republicans are still denigrating the government and still trying to destroy Social Security-- although now they approach it differently. Now they say they have to make some adjustments to "save it." Those adjustments inevitably mean raising the retirement age so that more people die before they can collect on what they've put in and on cutting benefits to the elderly. The conservative dream is to "privatize" it, meaning turn it over to the tender embrace of the Wall Street banksters, heirs to the class of criminals who tried hiring a general to lead a military move against FDR.

Instead of coups though, today we have massive brain-washing exercises through Fox News and Hate Talk Radio, underpinned by a network of billionaire-financed think-tanks. One of the worst of the right-wing think-tanks, No Labels," just roused two wealthy old white men out of retirement to give wrecking Social Security another try. I'm sure anyone who's been reading DWT for any length of time remembers the odious Joe Lieberman and billionaire Jon Huntsman, heir to a family of Mormon fanatics who became rich manufacturing one of earth's most devastating pollutants, polystyrene, the biggest and most toxic component of plastic garbage in the ocean. Every cent of the Huntsman fortune should be seized by the government and used to clean up the existential worldwide mess the family created. Instead, Huntsman has teamed up Lieberman to make poor people's lives unbearable in old age.

Wall Street banksters fund No Labels to destroy Social Security, Medicare and other social services and they have decided on Lieberman and Huntsman as their new frontmen. Reactionary politics is the name of their game and the two of them have been spotted recently lurking around Capitol Hill, shopping their ideas to lawmakers-- primarily Republicans and New Dems-- and to their natural allies on K Street, the corporate lobbyists. The organization founded by Eric Kingson, Social Security Works is sounding the alarm and demanding that Lieberman and Huntsman stand down. Social Security Works points out that that in the midst of a $7.7 trillion retirement security crisis and with two-thirds of retirees relying on Social Security for the majority of their income, now is not the time to be cutting Americans' hard earned benefits. Instead, as Kingson, a congressional candidate in Syracuse, and other progressives explain as part of their campaigns, we should be expanding Social Security benefits for millions of Americans. Social Security Works:

The American people are united in our support of protecting and expanding Social Security-- the most successful social insurance program in our country's history. And right now, a majority of Democrats in Congress support our efforts. We cannot allow Lieberman and Huntsman to successfully flip Congressional Democrats-- and worse yet, the next president-- on the future of Social Security.

All we need in order to strengthen Social Security is to finally ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. Right now, individuals pay into Social Security on the first $118,500 of their income. But if wealthier individuals pay in on ALL of their income, we will be able to expand the benefits of millions of Americans and have enough left to extend the lifespan of the Social Security trust fund.

No one likes to admit in public-- especially not right before an election-- that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. But on February 6, 2013, Oregon Blue Dog Kurt Schrader offered an amendment seeking to insert the anti-Social Security provisions of Simpson-Bowles into another bill. Schrader's House Amendment 19 to HR 444 failed 75-348. But 54 Democrats, primarily New Dems and Blue Dogs (the Hillary wing) voted for it. Thankfully, many are no longer in Congress, but these are some of the Democrats who voted for a death sentence for Social Security that day:

• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Joe Crowley (New Dem-NY)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)

• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Steny Hoyer (MD)
• Derek Kilmer (New Dem-WA)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Rick Larsen (New Dem-WA)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Loretta Sanchez (Blue Dog-CA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Chris Van Hollen (MD)
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)

New Dems Joe Garcia (FL) and Pete Gallego (TX) both voted for it as well and were subsequently defeated for reelect. I mention these two scumbags because both are trying to worm their way back into Congress this year. This would be an especially good year to defeat Kurt Schrader, who has a strong progressive opponent, Dave McTeague. McTeague and all the progressives on this list want to expand, not cut, Social Security:

Here in the year 2012, Crazy Rick accuses the president of "un-American activities, " and nobody thinks to asks WHAT activities he means?

Horse-race handicapping is apparently fun for some people, but for me it's only entertaining when it's done by Frank Loesser, whose "Fugue for Tinhorns" is served up here by Stubby Kaye (Nicely-Nicely Johnson), Johnny Silver (Benny Southstreet), and Danny Dayton (Rusty Charlie), from the 1955 film version of Guys and Dolls.

"[P]olitical journalism -- unlike war reporting -- long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers?"

-- George Packer, in his New Yorker blogpost
yesterday, "Un-American Activities"

by Ken

So those damned Iowa caucuses have finally happened, and now all the pundits, sure enough, are in high horse-race-handicapping mode as they ponder the Meaning of It All. And wouldn't you know that the name on all their lips is the very one who's the subject of the George Packer newyorker.com blogpost, "Un-American Activities," that I said yesterday I wanted to talk about today.

The interminable Iowa coverage made a frequent point of how special these caucuses are, being built as they are around serious discussion of issues important to voters, with all that close personal contact with actual candidates and their representatives. The corollary to the above is how, you know, seriously the Iowa caucus voters take those issues. But of course it's all pure, unadulterated bullshit. The "issues" are the now-usual mix of lies, delusions, corruption, and raw insanities.

Which brings us back to George Packer and Rick Santorum, a loathsome pile of filth who should be offered his choice of prison or a mental institution for his lifelong attempt to overthrow not just the American republic but honesty, decency, and sanity. He is, in two words, inexcusable filth, a mark of shame upon the human race. (I guess it should be noted in, er, fairness that Crazy Rick has been proclaimed "a fun candidate" by no less an authority on fun than George F. Will.)

CRAZY RICK HURLS A STUNNING ACCUSATION,
AND NOT A SOUL APPEARS TO NOTICE OR CARE

George (Packer, that is) begins by noting an essentially thrown-away line "in the tenth paragraph of a page A15 Times piece," in which the Crazyman accuses the president of -- are you ready? -- "absolutely un-American activities." Take a moment, here. Absolutely un-American activities. Quite a charge, you might think, when leveled against the president of the United States. And yet, George wonders,

What are they? The article doesn't say. The quote appears without explanation or comment, in an article entitled "Santorum's Challenge: Broaden His Appeal Beyond Evangelical Christians." Nor does the line show up anywhere else on the Web -- apparently no reporter in the mob following the candidates through the last days before the Iowa caucuses thought it worth writing down, and no blogger thought it worth repeating. It was just a throwaway line, a hunk of spoiled red meat tossed at the crowd in a Sioux City coffee shop, no more newsworthy than saying, "It's a great day to be an Iowan!" And the crowd ate it up, applauding lustily.

Then comes one for the You Can't Make This Stuff Up file. As reported by the NYT reporter in question, Jeremy Peters:

A supporter from a nearby town said that he liked Santorum for his avoidance of hyperbole: "Santorum doesn't make crazy statements."

Santorum doesn't make crazy statements, Santorum doesn't make crazy statements, Santorum doesn't make crazy statements. Is this some other "Santorum"? "Steady Melvin" Santorum, maybe? Or maybe a Bizarro World version of our Rick? Yes, a Bizzaro World Rick, being the exact opposite of Real World Rick, would never make crazy statements, would he? Unlike Real World Rick -- has any living soul ever heard him make an un-crazy statement?

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

In Crazy Rick's eye-popping (you'd think) accusation and the (non-)response to it, George finds "several things worth noting." Naturally they're all more fully elaborately in the full piece, but here's the gist:

* "[I]n today's Republican politics, one reliable way to reach beyond the Christian base is by whipping up nationalistic hysteria with language lifted straight from the McCarthy era." You know, like "some old-fashioned traitor-hunting."

* "[T]his kind of gutter rhetoric is so routine in the Republican campaign that it's not worth a political journalist's time to point it out." George notes that when Michele Bachmann suggested in 2008 "that Barack Obama and an unknown number of her colleagues in Congress were anti-America, there was a flurry of criticism." Now the charge directed at the actual president of the United States goes unnoticed. "Certain forms of deterioration," he suggests, "become acceptable by attrition, because critics lose the energy to call them out. Eventually, people even stop remembering that they're wrong."

* "[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood."

AFTER ALLOWING FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
OF HORSE-RACE REPORTING, GEORGE SHIFTS INTO GEAR

[P]olitical journalism -- unlike war reporting -- long ago stopped being about what is true or important. Sometime in the nineteen-eighties, reporters began covering politics like sports and entertainment. How many times and ways can you say that the Republican Party has descended into unreality and extremism before you lose your viewers and readers? On the other hand, there's an endless appetite for stories about Santorum's effort to reach out beyond his evangelical base, or Gingrich playing the expectations game in Iowa. This stuff is political candy.

The great puzzle of the Republican campaign is that, in an era of unprecedented ideological fervor, the party will almost certainly nominate the candidate who is the blandest, least ideological, and least trusted by conservatives of them all (that would be Mitt Romney -- Jon Huntsman doesn't count as long as he's in the low single digits). The reasons for this are not easy to see, and in some ways they're fluky. Romney, forever stuck at twenty-five per cent, understands his situation acutely, and he's telling anyone in Iowa who will listen that he loves America, prays and reads Scripture (while wishing he did it more), hates illegal immigrants as much as the next guy, and thinks that Obama has destroyed this country at home and abroad. Romney is like an actor who normally does investment commercials and is improbably cast in an ad for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He's doing a credible job playing an intellectual thug, because that's the only way to win the nomination.

It would be a mistake, though, to believe that, long after Iowa, once the horse race is over, and if he's elected, Romney could suddenly flip a switch, clear the air of the toxicity left behind by the Republican field, and return to being a cautious centrist whose most reassuring quality is his lack of principles. His party wouldn't let him; and, after all, how a candidate runs shapes how a President governs. In politics, once a sellout, always a sellout; once a thug, always a thug.

Someone might at least have asked which "un-American
activities" Crazy Rick was accusing the president of.

§

NO SURPRISE, E. J. DIONNE JR. GOES BEYOND HORSE-
RACE HANDICAPPING TO REAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

"I love watching Republicans engage in class warfare." E.J. begins a characteristically lovely, thoughtful WaPo column called "Santorum, Huntsman and the future of conservatism."

They condemn it as a sin when Democrats come within 100 miles of even mentioning the sharp and growing class inequalities in the United States. But when conservatives play the class card, they see it as a high ethical calling involving the defense of good and moral folk against the depredations of a liberal elite.

Blatant hypocrisy is instructive.

It's a characteristically quiet, acute piece, well worth everyone's attention, and especially anyone who thinks of the stuff that comes out of Crazy Rick's piehole, not as delusional ravings, but as "a philosophy (and a theology) that holds his views together." But then, that's E.J. for you -- always willing to see the best in everyone.

It’s a retro philosophy but no less interesting for that. So comparatively speaking, he comes by his class warfare honestly, even if he panders shamelessly on guns and gays and talks about the strait-laced President Obama as if he embodied the moral sensibilities of Woodstock and Gomorrah.

(Um, E.J., "even if"?)

E.J. CONTRASTS CRAZY RICK -- ER, PHILOSOPHER
RICK WITH (NOW DON'T LAUGH!) JON HUNTSMAN

"If the Republicans want to have a genuinely searching debate about the future of their party," E.J. writes, "they’d send Santorum and Huntsman off for the long fight." Huntsman, he says,

is a forceful economic conservative but also resolutely modern. He's a defender of science, a hard-eyed realist on foreign affairs who rejects Santorum's neoconservative moralism, and he speaks the policy language of an upper middle class that likes its politics to focus on deficits and our future competition with China.

Now we get down to some actual, serious issues of political -- and, I'm afraid, religious -- belief.

Santorum is a Catholic of a certain kind, and it's the most important thing about him. He's on one side of a long-standing debate in the church about how to build a decent society. Social-justice Catholics (and I'm one of those) represent an older American tradition. We agree with more conservative Catholics on the family as an essential social building block but see capitalism as in need of regulation and correction if it is to serve the common good and protect the family itself. Many of us -- and here we depart from the church's official teaching -- see gay marriage not as undermining fidelity and commitment but as encouraging them.

By contrast, Santorum is what Republican strategist Steve Wagner years ago called a "social renewal" Catholic. These Catholics see opposition to abortion as a foundational matter and opposition to gay marriage as essential to "protecting" the family. They view the federal government less as a guarantor of social fairness than as "inflicting harm on the nation's moral character," as Wagner has put it.

Huntsman’s core vote, such as it is right now, comes from less intensely religious economic rationalists who do not perceive culture wars as breaking out all over. Santorum reflects the sensibility of the Catholic and evangelical working-class voters whose ballots Republicans have long taken for granted.

The thing is, to some of us those traditional "moral" values E.J. credits Crazy Rick with have precious little to do with morality. (If "the family" is depending for "protection" on raving sociopaths like Crazy Rick, it is deservedly as well as truly doomed.) No, to some of us, Crazy Rick's vicious rantings are merely savage regurgitations of the primitive dicta of an international authoritarian hierarchy of fanatical enforcers of ignorance and hatred.

I guess it's the old to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to thing. (Only seeing as how the damned tomatoes have no taste anyway, I say chuck 'em all at the wacko agent of Satan.)

§

MEANWHILE, EVEN BEFORE HIS IOWA "TRIUMPH,"
CRAZY RICK HAD ICKY RUPERT IN HIS CORNER

Meanwhile John Cassidy, in another New Yorker blogpost, "Six Reasons Why Rupert Murdoch Is Tweeting for Rick Santorum," takes note, first, of the creepy phenomenon of the 80-year-old Rupert taking to Twitter (apparently a subject of much online interest over the New Year's weekend), and more particularly of his enthusiasm for -- you guessed it! -- Crazy Rick.

“Good to see santorum surging in Iowa,” Murdoch wrote on January 1st. “Regardless of policies, all debates showed principles, consistency and humility like no other.” The following day, he followed up with another message: “Can’t resist this tweet, but all Iowans think about Rick Santorum. Only candidate with genuine big vision for country.”

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At last, courtesy of Andy Borowitz, a plausible theory for how these, er, people came to be the 2012 "Republican presidential field"

"I'll take 'Intergalactic Travel, Socialist Plot?' for $100, Alex."

"It was like a sitcom with no main characters and just wacky neighbors."

-- conspiracy theorist Tracy Klugian, quoted in The Borowitz Report

by Ken

In a comment on Noah's kickoff of his Year 2011 in Review festivities earlier today ("Republicans Raised the Ante with Their Racism"), which focused on the tsunami of all-consuming craziness barreling down on us from the Right, our friend me wrote, simply and poignantly, "How I wish that Obama was a president I could support. But he's not."

I'm sure he's aware that this is a sentiment that Howie and Noah and I feel pretty strongly too, and I want to come back to that, possibly in my next post. (Or then again, possibly not. Who can say?) Still, there is something awe- and terror-inspiring about that onrushing wall of malign craziness -- and the "malign" part is important. I'm not aware of any natural law that dictates that craziness has to be so unremittingly hateful and dehumanizing. With right-wingers, it just seems to work out that way.

ARE RON PAUL AND JON HUNTSMAN EXCEPTIONS?

I don't think of them as exceptions so much as, say, asterisks. Ron Paul's trademark libertarianism indeed leads him to occasional pronouncements on issues, like the warmongering so beloved of more traditional ultra-right loonies, which would make the other candidates look like the imbeciles they are if anybody but the Republican base were doing the looking. But you'll notice he never pushes his contrarian positions very hard, and most of his "beliefs" are as wacky as the competition's. LIbertarianism always seems to me, well, not the last refuge, more like the second or third refuge, of minds that either have grown too tired to think or think they're more blazingly insightful than they really are. It takes a few correct but trivial observations about the world around us and pretends to inflate them into a "philosophy."

As for Jon Huntsman, to me he's sort of the Alan Colmes of the 2012 GOP presidential jamboree -- less whacked-out than his cohorts, yes, but not enough so as to matter that much, and in any case so milquetoastish (the technical term, I think, is "nebbishy") as to pose no threat to them or the reigning insanity.

For now, no doubt inspired by the, er, spectacle of yet another of these hideous Republican candidate debates, I can't help but step back and contemplate the cosmic incredibleness of it. And I do mean "incredible." How is it possible to believe that one of our only two major parties has come up with this as a field of candidates to offer its supporters?

As it happens, that eminent political theorist Andy Borowitz has come up with a theory to explain how. It's certainly no crazier than the stuff that came out of those people's mouths the other night.

Conspiracy Theorists Believe Actual Republican Candidates Are Tied Up Somewhere

Obama a Prime Suspect

DES MOINES (The Borowitz Report) – A growing number of conspiracy theorists believe that the Republican candidates who keep showing up for televised debates are impostors and that the actual GOP candidates are tied up in a warehouse somewhere.

“There’s no way that these people are the actual candidates,” said Tracy Klugian, a leading conspiracy theorist who subscribes to the warehouse theory. “The American people need to stand up and demand the return of the real ones.”

Mr. Klugian, who started the website WhereAreTheRealOnes.com, said he started suspecting “something was up” months ago when the “supposed Republican candidates started debating,” but last night’s debate in Iowa left little doubt in his mind that the actual Republican candidates have been detained elsewhere.

“When the most sensible person onstage is Ron Paul,” he said, “you know that what you’re witnessing is an elaborate hoax.”

Conspiracy theorists like Mr. Klugian leave little doubt who might be behind the conspiracy to tie up the actual candidates at some remote location: President Barack Obama.

“If you could ensure that you’d be running against Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, wouldn’t you?” he said. “When the truth about this conspiracy comes out, it’s going to make what happened with the aliens at Roswell look like a game of duck-duck-goose.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Klugian said he remains “baffled” by people who insist on believing that the seven people who debated last night in Iowa are the actual Republican candidates.

“There’s no way you can believe that if you actually watched the debate,” he said. “It was like a sitcom with no main characters and just wacky neighbors.”

Since I'm ripping Andy off so shamelessly, it seems only fair to carry his promotional water. In addition to once again hawking his damned book (hey, I guess if he doesn't, who will? okay, it's The 50 Funniest American Writers), he has news of an event he'll be doing in New York with "an A-list panel of comedians and journalists": "Andy Borowitz's Countdown to 2012: Ancient Mayan Prophets Edition," at Kaufmann Concert Hall on May 15. In addition to the regular $29 ticket option, there's a "Cocktails and Conversation" option available "from $40." (From $40?) There's also a previously announced L.A. event, a Writers Bloc "Conversation with Sarah Silverman" at the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills on February 28.)

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Hunstman wants Willard's $10,000

ABC excluded Jon Huntsman from last night's Iowa debate because he isn't polling 5% in the state or nationally. Instead, he was in New Hampshire-- throwing stones:

"They're engaging in another evening of theatrics and game show-like discussions. We're here on the ground in New Hampshire talking real issues with real voters. I feel we are exactly where we ought to be, this is what needs to be done. We're doing the New Hampshire primary... I am in this race because I fundamentally feel the American people are getting screwed."

He even said he might not watch the debate on TV-- if Curb Your Enthusiasm was running a good episode.

Tomorrow Huntsman takes on Gingrich for a one-on-one Lincoln-Douglas style forum at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. He'd like to get a shot at Romney in a similar format but knows there isn't much chance the over-careful, poll-driven, focus group-driven Romney campaign will do anything out of the ordinary... except to start babbling nonsense about lunar colonies ("Places where we disagree? Let's see, we can start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon") and to make a sponaneous $10,000 bet in front of a national auddience. The funny thing is, it's a bet Perry should have called him on and walked away with the ten grand. As you can see in the video above, that's what Huntsman would have done. Perry just used it as a class war weapon with which to pound poor Willard with this morning.

Rick Perry said Sunday he's still not a betting man, but the Texas governor is counting on Mitt Romney losing support among Iowans for offering to wager $10,000 in a dispute over his health care record.

"I was taken a little bit a back," Perry told Fox News Sunday. "Driving out to the station this morning, I'm pretty sure I didn't drive by a house that anyone in Iowa would even think about that a $10,000 bet possible, so a little out of touch of the normal Iowa citizen... The issue of individual mandates is still at the center here, and Mitt can deny this as many times as he wants, but in his first book, hard cover, of No Apologies, he clearly stated that individual mandate should be the model for this country. And then he took that out of the book, in the paperback, and that's the fact, and even a $10,000 bet is not gonna cover that."

..."I want to know if he has $10,000 in his pocket," the spokesman for new Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich, R.C. Hammond, said after the debate.

In a statement, the Democratic National Committee said $10,000 is almost three times more than what an average family spends on groceries in a year and more than a year's worth of mortgage payments for the typical American home purchased today.

..."I didn't grow up poor. And if somebody is looking for someone who's grown up with that background, I'm not the person," Romney said during the debate, noting that his father was poor at one point in his life. He added that his parents "made sure we had jobs when we were growing up. They made sure we didn't spend money foolishly."

As you can see, the front page headline in Iowa's biggest newspaper, the Des Moines Register wasn't favorable for Romney. And inside the paper, it only got worse.

Perry really made his mark when he successfully goaded Mitt Romney into one of the worst moments he’s had in a debate so far. Perry challenged Romney on a passage in his first book, claiming an early edition said the Massachusetts health-care program should be a model for the national plan.

Romney disputed the claim and when Perry persisted, he jokingly offered a $10,000 bet. Perry didn’t take the bet, but he won the point. Romney was casually offering the equivalent of about one-fifth of the average median income for an Iowa family. Romney’s privileged background was driven home later when the candidates were asked whether they’d ever had to cut costs in their own family budget.

“I didn’t grow up poor,” Romney said, and noted that if voters are looking for someone who did, they’ll have to vote for somebody else.

Huntsman Strikes Back

This morning he was on with Christiane Amanpour, whose bookers don't care if he has 5% or even 1%-- just as long as he's part of the one percent. And, of course, born into a family of multimillionaires, he certainly is. Here's some of their banter:

HUNTSMAN: [O]n the debate stage last night, I believe that the most important issue of all confronting the American people wasn't even touched upon, and that is the deficit of trust that we have in the United States. In fact, it may have-- it played right into the trust deficit. That is, nobody trusts Congress anymore. We need term limits in Congress. We need to close the revolving door that allows members of Congress to move right on into the lobbying profession. No one has trust anymore toward the executive branch. No one trusts Wall Street, with banks that are too big to fail. So the-- I would argue that the issues that are most salient in our political dialogue today weren't even touched upon last night.

AMANPOUR: So then how do you explain the phenomenal rise of Newt Gingrich? You say people don't have trust, and yet he does seem to be speaking, at least to Republican voters, in a way that you aren't, for instance.

HUNTSMAN: Well, listen, there have been so many ups and downs in this race, I'm getting whiplashed, quite frankly. We've had six front-runners in the span of about six months. And all I can tell you, having spent a whole lot of time here in New Hampshire-- we have had 116 public events in this state-- is that the voters will begin to coalesce around a candidate about a week to 10 days out. The marketplace is still open. People are shopping. They are listening very, very carefully. And all I can say, Christiane, is the two messages that we're delivering to the people here on the ground, the economic deficit which is the cancer metastasizing in this country and one that is a national security problem, I would say, and the trust deficit are the two biggest issues we face today. And we're getting people showing up to our town hall meetings in numbers I never would have imagined. They're signing up afterwards, they're taking lawn signs home.

I feel very good about their trajectory here in this great state. And this is always the state that upends conventional wisdom. So let's not fall back onto conventional wisdom. That never holds true in the end.

...AMANPOUR: [L]et me ask you about where this campaign is going. I read to you a few comments from people before, including one who called you the sanest one still running. But it appears that you're reversing some of your own eminently sensible positions, for instance on climate change. You in August tweeted that "to be clear, I believe in evolution, and I trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." You have been tweeting about this sort of rightward swing, you've been jabbing at the base. And yet last week, you sort of rolled that bit back on climate change. You sort of said there isn't enough science. I mean, what are you doing?

HUNTSMAN: Well, Christiane, I'm not changing at all. I have said all along that I put my faith and trust in science. When you have 99 out 100 climate scientists, you have members of the National Academy of Sciences who have weighed in on a body of research on the subject matter, I say that's where I put my trust.

Yes, there might be one percent of scientists who still are questioning some of those assumptions, and that debate and discussion will continue. But as for me, let me make it crystal clear. I'm on the side of science in this debate. I don't know a whole lot of people on Capitol Hill who are physicists or climate scientists. I think this is a discussion that needs to be taken out of the political lane and kept in the science lane.

AMANPOUR: One more question, you have said that you will endorse and support whoever's the nominee. If it is Newt Gingrich, will he get your endorsement?

HUNTSMAN: Well, listen, I don't have to worry about that, because we're moving up in this great state of New Hampshire. We're going to be the nominee, and I don't have to worry about anything beyond that.

Yep, when push comes to shove, he's still a lying sack of shit politician... and, if that's not bad enough, a Republican. But, lunar colonies aside, does anyone who didn't inherit millions of dollars want this out-of-touch freak as president?

Huntsman Isn't Weird The Way Romney Is... But He's Not The Answer-- Unless You're A Multimillionaire Like They Are

Jon Huntsman reincarnates as Calvin Coolidge

Some Democrats have been so desperate to find an alternative to Obama that they actually perked up when Jon Hunstman remarked on the unsuitability of either Romney or Perry for the presidency and when he tweeted playfully last week that, unlike Perry, he believes in both evolution and global warming. Those aren't popular notions among the Foxified, Koched-up Republican base these days. But don't get too excited. Huntsman's economic vision for America is as twisted, toxic and reactionary as Herbert Hoover's, George Bush's, Eric Cantor's, Rick Perry's or Mitt Romney's: tax cuts for the rich paired with tax increases and service cut backs for the middle class and society's most vulnerable.

Huntsman's plan, released yesterday is "as bad for the middle-class-- and as nutty-- as any proposed by his rivals. It would pay for a half-million-dollar tax break for the richest 0.1 percent of Americans with tax increases on the middle-class and new taxes on seniors, veterans, and poor families." OK... scratch that one off the list.

In an apparent attempt to eclipse all previous Republican giveaways, including the disastrous Bush tax cuts, Huntsman would drop the marginal rate paid by the richest Americans by more than a third to 23 percent-- a lower rate than rich people paid during the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations or any time since. He would also eliminate all taxes on all capital gains and dividend income-- the primary forms of income for the wealthiest Americans.

Huntsman says he will pay for this supply-side bonanza by eliminating all so-called “tax expenditures.” He probably borrowed the idea from a theoretical scenario described by the President’s Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka, the deficit commission). The Commission observed that if all tax expenditures were eliminated, income tax rates could, in theory, be consolidated into three brackets: 8, 14, and 23 percent-- the same as what Huntsman proposed today.

But the Commission only offered that scenario as a thought experiment, not as a serious proposal. In fact, no one has seriously proposed to eliminate all tax expenditures because doing so would punish seniors, the middle-class, poor families, and veterans, among others.

Huntsman either hasn’t thought through-- or doesn’t want people to know-- what eliminating all tax expenditures would actually mean. So let’s take a look at the official tax expenditure list and see what would happen if we got rid of all of them:

– All Social Security benefits would become taxable. Senior citizens that currently receive the average Social Security benefit as their primary income source (as is the case for most seniors) currently pay no income taxes on those benefits, but would under Huntsman’s plan.

– Many middle-class parents would lose child tax credits and tax benefits for education and child care that are more valuable to them than a tax rate cut.

– Huntsman’s tax plan would also eliminate the employer health insurance exclusion, which helps enable some 160 million Americans get coverage through their jobs.

– One of the most successful pro-work, anti-poverty initiatives, the Earned Income Tax Credit, would be abolished.

– Veterans pensions and disability benefits would become subject to tax, as would all military combat pay, military housing allowances and meals, workers compensation payments, public assistance benefits, and state foster care payments.

So yeah... he may not be as bad around the fringes, but Jon Huntsman is another anti-family tool of the ruling elites and their power grab for plutocracy through the GOP. Feh! I don't know if Huntsman was just shooting off his mouth-- the bombastic way rich people who inherited their wealth always do-- but he told NBC News

Good Morning! Jon Huntsman Has A Message For Republican Voters

Republican primary voters aren't taking Jon Huntsman's desperate thrust left towards the mainstream seriously. But the DNC is. I know yesterday was Huntsman Day here at DWT but we couldn't resist running this new ad. We'll be up in an hour with another analysis of what's wrong with Barack Obama's tepid centrism. Meanwhile... we'll find out if the DNC is actually putting this ad on TV or just sending it around to bloggers for some cheap thrills.

While The Other Right-Wing Contenders Scramble... Huntsman Decides To Have A Good Time

Willard is still counting on it being "his turn," on the anointment from the topdown party's Establishment, on the immense amount of money he has been able to raise among Mormons and fellow vulture capitalists, and, of course, on looking just a little weird in a roomful of out-and-out raving crackpots. He's even taken some time out to work up a plan and permit application to bulldoze his $12 million ocean side mansion, built in 1936 in tony La Jolla, to replace it with a monstrosity almost four times bigger.

Bachmann is busy reassuring mainstream voters that she can spell her name and Rick Perry came riding into the race ass-backwards on a Brahma bull, making a spectacle of himself and making a lot of disappointed voters take a second look at Barack Obama.

And those three are the top tier! Republican office holders-- especially those who have to face reelection in 2012-- are getting really worried and showing immense dissatisfaction with the presidential nomination offerings. They've been clamoring for horribly flawed candidates from Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin and George Pataki to the third-rate Insurance Industry shill who wants to abolish Medicare, Paul Ryan. In other words... no confidence in Romney (or the shabby alternatives that the teabaggers have puked up as alternatives).

Jon Huntsman actually sounds like a credible candidate making serious arguments about topics normal American voters want to see debated. But he's made next to no headway in a conversation dominated by shrill screaming heads like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Ann Couler, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage... and the pathetic candidates kowtowing to them and their hysterical ideas meant to goose ratings in a decimated, fractionalized media market where the most popular flavor-- vanilla-- doesn't do what garlic ice cream, Budweiser beer gelato, Chunky Bacon, Ben & Jerry's Sweddy Balls, or Ox Tongue ice cream will do in a world measured on the margins.

While Romney bogs down in designing a Western White House, Bachmann spins further and further out of control and Rick Perry advertises his God theory of governance, Huntsman is talking about things Republicans may not like but that normal Americans are interested in discussing-- like ending the occupation of Afghanistan.

We need to bring people home from Afghanistan. This should not be a nation-building exercise when we have nation-building to do right here in our own country. This is a counter-terror effort. We need people in Afghanistan who can collect intelligence, Special Forces capabilities and some element to train the national-- the Afghan national troops. But we should not be involved in nation-building.

And we've got to basically call it for what it is and get back to strengthening the core of this country or we are of no value to the rest of the world. That light, that goodness that traditionally has radiated over the years, that speaks to democracy, that speaks to liberty, that speaks to open markets and human rights. We're not projecting that goodness anymore. The world always is a better and a safer place with a strong America. And right now, we don't have a strong America.

Hunstman-- who slammed Perry for espousing an extremist agenda (anti-science, pro-secessionist) that makes him unelectable-- is calling the current self-selected crop of GOP candidates "sideshows." Unfortunately, they're sideshows dedicated to further wrecking the already anemic economic recovery to devastate American families in the hope of them blaming Obama for his inability to cope with right-wing obstructionism. Last week Huntsmen told Jake Tapper he wouldn't trust any of them!

I wouldn't necessarily trust any of my opponents right now, who were on a recent debate stage with me, when every single one of them would have allowed this country to default. You can imagine, even given the uncertainty of the marketplace the last several days and even the last couple of weeks, if we had defaulted the first time in the history of the greatest country that ever was, being 25 percent of the world's GDP and having the largest financial services sector in this world by a long shot, if we had defaulted, Jake, this marketplace would be in absolute turmoil. And people who are already losing enough as it is on their 401(k)s and retirement programs and home valuations, it would have been catastrophic.

So I have to say that there was zero leadership on display in terms of my opponents. Leaders-- zero leadership on display in terms of the president, who should have used the bully pulpit well ahead of time. He should have walked away from the teleprompter. The people want you to speak from your heart and soul. Tell us where you want us to go. Tell us what you expect from Congress. Tell us what's on your mind.

That never happened. And it waited until the eleventh hour and then we had some of my Republican opponents who basically, I think, recommended something that would have been catastrophic for this economy. I stood alone in terms of supporting the Boehner plan. Why? Because I don't think you can just allow the greatest nation that ever was, 25 percent of the world's GDP, to default. I thought the-- the implications would have been catastrophic. The global markets would have been a complete wreck.

Huntsman, frustrated with the goofballs in his own party, wants to take Obama on directly-- as an adult, not in a mudwrestling match. On Friday we all enjoyed this Huntsman quote meant to contrast himself with the freakshow he finds himself in-- although it was aimed directly at right-wing media darling Rick Perry.


The one far fewer people saw... also posted Friday-- but from Huntsman's daughters:


I don't know how much good any of this is going to do Huntsman in a Republican primary contest defined by Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and geared towards hate-or-greed-obsessed political Neanderthals, but... maybe he should switch parties and run against Obama as a Democrat. He'd probably get more support than he's getting as a Republican!

Tom Tomorrow says: "Welcome to the Never-Ending Conservative Carnival of Crazy"

And just imagine, this was before the news of Jon Huntsman's entry into the fray! (Jon Huntsman? Do any U.S. voters outside Utah even recognize the name?)

Jon Huntsman to seek Republican nomination for White House race
Former US ambassador to China served under Obama and had praised the president in the leaked diplomatic cables

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 June 2011 20.30 BST

Jon Huntsman announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and intention to take on former boss Barack Obama.

There are only a few positive remarks about Barack Obama dotted about in the embassy cables sent by former American ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks.

But they will be enough to cause problems for the latest Republican president candidate in the months ahead.

Huntsman, from a podium in New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty in the background, announced on Tuesday that he would join the race to take on his old boss for the White House next year.

Confirming his intention to seek the nomination, he criticised the president's record and, in contrast with his time as ambassador when he projected American strength, portrayed the US as vulnerable.

"For the first time in our history, we are passing down to the next generation a country that is less powerful, less compassionate, less competitive and less confident than the one we got. This, ladies and gentlemen, is totally unacceptable and totally un-American," he said.

Huntsman, 51, could be a formidable presidential candidate, given his experience in foreign affairs and as a former governor of Utah. But many Republicans cannot forgive the fact that he served in the Obama administration.

The president approached Huntsman in 2009 and asked him to be the ambassador to Beijing, and Huntsman accepted, serving until this April. In that time, he worked alongside the Obama on issues ranging from climate change to human rights, and stood side by side with him when the president visited China.

It is rare in US politics for someone who worked for one president to turn around and challenge him. Huntsman's work in the Obama administration is almost certain to be raised by Republican rivals. It could also undercut his attacks on the president. . . .

COMMENTERS, PLEASE KEEP YOUR
FINGER OFF THE "CAPS LOCK" KEY

As I indicated in my reply, I had a tough call on a comment that didn't seem to me really on topic -- but that seemed heartfelt and not definitively off topic. I gave the commenter the benefit of the doubt, but with this proviso:

"What will be a deal-breaker next time is the use of all caps. That's an unforgivable imposition on readers, and please don't you or anyone else do that again. I didn't know till now that I have a rule against it. Now I know, and you do too."

#

Republican Civil War Report Du Jour: Tom Price vs Limbaugh, Lindsey Graham vs Ron Paul

Gingrey warns fellow Georgia Repug Tom Price what to expect next

Tom Price's House colleagues find him to be one of the most unpleasant, overly partisan and inflexible members of Congress. Even the most cursory examination of his voting record shows a lockstep obstructionist and over-the-top extremist who is completely owned by the banking interests-- they've "donated" $901,849 to his career-- and always votes to push forward their agenda, regardless of how devastating the impact on his constituents back in the suburbs north of Atlanta.

This morning former GOP-congressman Joe Scarborough had Price as a guest on his Republican Party propaganda TV show at MSNBC and Price, as unlikely a man for the task as one could imagine, drew a line in the sand separating the GOP from Rush Limbaugh:

SCARBOROUGH: Congressman, do you disagree with Rush Limbaugh that Colin Powell should leave the Republican Party?

PRICE: Look, it’s not up to Rush Limbaugh to decide who ought to be in the Republican Party. There are all sorts of wonderful folks across this land who hold dear the fundamental principles that we, as Republicans...

SCARBOROUGH: Congressman, do you believe that Rush Limbaugh or Dick Cheney are better, quote-- I’m just using terms that we hear every day on TV and radio-- that they are somehow better Republicans than Colin Powell?

PRICE: No. Goodness.

You'll recall that the last time a Georgia congressman-- Phil Gingrey-- tried something like this with Limbaugh, he was licking the Pig Man's pilonidal cyst within 24 hours, groveling and publically begging for forgiveness. If Price doesn't back down, that makes 2 congressional Republicans who have denigrated Limbaugh in the last few days, John Shadegg (R-AZ), hardly anyone's idea of a profile in courage, having done so last week.

When Obama named Utah's Republican Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr, a mainstream conservative, ambassador to China, people joked that in accepting the job, Huntsman-- whose approval ratings are the highest of any GOP governor in America (84%)-- was being forced to flee the country to get away from the Limbaugh/Cheney/Coulter wing of the Republican Party which has targeted him as disloyal for cooperating with Obama on issues vital to the citizens of Utah.

Many think Huntsman is positioning himself to pick up the pieces when the hard right's strategy of all obstructionism all the time shatters what's left of the GOP in 2010 and 2012, just like it did when Republicans followed the exact same playbook in 1934 and 1936 after Roosevelt was first elected. Then it left the Republicans with 17 seats in the Senate and 88 in the House. Keep in mind, not a single Republican in the House voted for Social Security and the only one who voted for it in the Senate, George Norris, was driven out of the party, then running as an independent and even stripping Nebraska out of the GOP Senate delegation! Huntsman's strategy could be looking forward to 2016.

This morning right-wing propaganda writer Byron York interviewed John Weaver, a Republican political operative close to both Huntsman and John McCain. Weaver predicts that if the GOP stays on course presenting itself as the Party of No dominated by Cheney, Limbaugh, the teabaggers, far right extremists, and Know Nothings, the effects will be the same as in '34 and '36: a blowout.

The Republican strategist who helped Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman prepare for a possible presidential run says the Republican party is in for a devastating defeat if its guiding lights are Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.  "If it's 2012 and our party is defined by Palin and Limbaugh and Cheney, then we're headed for a blowout," says strategist John Weaver, who advised Huntsman and was for years a close adviser to Sen. John McCain. "That's just the truth."

..."I firmly believe that Huntsman and people like him are the prescription for what ails us," says Weaver. "But I have the feeling that our party maybe won't order that prescription in 2012."

This morning's Official Republican Party Talking Points Dispatch makes it clear that many GOP office-holders are starting to get cold feet that Cheney, Limbaugh, Palin and the Club For Greed extremists have become the (very ugly) face of the party they have to run for office on. After Specter blamed the Club for Greed for his decision to jump the fence, some of the left behind Republicans started "to turn on the organization, saying it backs those who are so conservative that they then lose to Democrats."

"If their goal is to increase the Democrats' numbers in Congress, they're doing a very good job," said Rep. Steven LaTourette (R., Ohio), a moderate who won his seat in 1994. "Do they want a permanent minority of 140 people as pure as Caesar's wife, or a Republican majority that can get them 70% of the issues that are important to them?... If the Democrats said everyone had to look like a Democrat from Massachusetts, they would not be the majority party."

You may recall how flustered Lindsey Graham was after Specter left the GOP. "I'm not looking to be a member of a club," he lisped. "The difference between being a club and a national party is being able to play outside your traditional areas." That carried over to the South Carolina Republican Party this weekend, where he was booed and harrassed when he defensively tried taking a mainstream conservative approach at a gathering dominated by teabaggers-- who had already tasted Gresham Barrett's blood last month-- and Ron Paul libertarians. They reap what they've sowed:



Chris Bowers at Open Left put together this fascinating chart that shows the favorability ratings of the country's most visable Republican leaders. Odd that people still hate Bush the most, even more than Cheney. Maybe they should switch spokespersons and have Cindy McCain out there more and Limbaugh, Newt, Karl Rove and John Boehner a lot less.

Obama Removes The GOP's One Sane Contender From 2012 Presidential Race-- Huntsman Accepts Job As Ambassador To China

Huntsman will need a very large compound in Beijing

A few days ago David Plouffe looked over the motley array of Republicans positioning themselves for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination-- Newt Gingrich, Pyush Jindal, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee... and he said none of them had enough connection to the political mainstream to be of concern. He then mentioned that Utah's current governor, Jon Huntsman, Jr. is "the one person in that party who might be a [serious] potential presidential candidate."

Huntsman is a mainstream conservative who has lately come under fire from the dominant Cheney/Limbaugh teabagger wing of the Republican Party. Despite an 84% approval rating-- the highest of any Republican governor in the U.S.-- Huntsman's mainstream attitudes towards science, the environment, Obama's stimulus package, immigration, and even gay people, has not endeared him to the stalwarts of the Party of No.

Huntsman, who announced a couple weeks ago he would not be running for a third term as governor, did his Mormon missionary work in Taiwan, is fluent in Mandarin and adopted a little Chinese girl he found abandoned in a vegetable market 10 years ago. Today President Obama announced that he will appoint Huntsman ambassador to China. Assuming that the obstructionists in his own party don't torpedo his confirmation, this pretty much takes Huntsman, the son of a billionaire, out of contention for the 2012 GOP nomination.

The mainstream policies Huntsman has advocated have endeared him to moderates in the GOP and to independent voters but there is no room for that kind of talk as far as the party's current dictators are concerned. Huntsman's civil unions approach for gay couples has driven the far right off the cliff and by signing a regional initiative setting up a cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming, he is looked on by the extremists as a traitor to the GOP. Speaking in Shanghai in 2006 about the need for close cooperation between the U.S. and China on environmental issues, he used all the wrong words as far as the radical right is concerned: "good stewards of the Earth" translates in Republican-speak as not supporting unrestricted development and market-based capitalism. They abhor him. A right-wing hate group in Kent County, Michigan (the Republican Party) withdrew a speaking invitation to Huntsman because of his mainstream views. The crazed bigot who leads the local party, Joanne Voorhees, wrote in the local newspaper that "The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite."

Huntsman has refused to kiss up to the national extremists in his party and got into hot water with them when he told the Moonie Times that he blames the GOP's dire straits on the low quality of congressional leaders the party is stuck with. He says he doesn't know them and has never met them. "I don't listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential-- completely." Mike Pence, one of those leaders and one of the least competent and most ideologically extreme of any elected official in America, claims that GOP leaders "aren't as incompetent as they might appear."

Even in that interview Huntsman used a Chinese phrase to describe Republicans:

He said congressional Republicans failed to score political points for opposing the bill - only three Republican senators supported it - because the public saw them as objecting to being shut out by Democrats from helping write the bill rather than as taking a principled stand.

The governor said congressional Republicans are being frustrated by a lack of credibility on the party's No. 1 tenet: fiscal responsibility.

"That's why no one is paying any attention," he said. "Our moral soapbox was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years. For us to now criticize analogous behavior is hypocrisy. We've got to come at it a different way. We've got to prove the point. It can't be as the Chinese would say, 'fei hua,' [or] empty words."

...Mr. Huntsman, who was in Washington for a meeting of governors, said the failure of Republican leaders in Congress to move beyond "gratuitous partisanship" has left it to the party's governors and other state officials to come up with "big, bold solutions and ideas" that will win over voters and revive the party.

On the other hand, as Adam Green pointed out today at Open Left, let's not get too carried away with Huntsman, the way Obama just did. Huntsman is clearly better than intellectual midgets and knee-jerk obstructionists like Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Carrie Prejean, Jim DeMint and Mike Pence but what kind of a bar is that? OK, he thinks Mormons should be allowed to buy booze on Sundays, gays should be separate but almost equal, and he even speaks a foreign language. Better than most Republican elected officials-- but still... a Republican.

Al Giordano makes an interesting case about 3 dimensional chess and how Obama is strengthening his ties with Mormons in swing states like Colorado, Arizona and Nevada with Mormons who will be pissed off that the Mormon-hating evangelicals will again deny Bishop Romney the Republican presidential nomination for only one reason: his funny underpants.

Unless the GOP plans to just bite the bullet and run Rush Limbaugh-- after all a great many hate talk show hosts have been elected Republican members of Congress, including J.D. Hayworth and Mike Pence-- the Republicans are going to have to find a new face to present to the public in 2012. The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor of Georgia, John Oxendine, is perfect for the GOP, threatening to run Planned Parenthood out of Georgia when he's elected. He bragged that he had painted his son's nursery "Confederate Gray." Another secessionist like the kook in Texas, here's Oxendine's tweet from last week:

New Hampshire State Senate Votes For Same Sex Marriage But... Virginia Foxx Is Still Taking Up Space In Congress

No clown makeup needed

New Hampshire took another giant step forward in joining New England neighbors in Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut, plus the state of Iowa, in decriminalizing marraige for gay people. The state Senate voted 13-11 for a slightly amended version of the bill the House had already passed. Although most New Hampshire voters support same sex marriage, the state's conservative Democratic governor, John Lynch, hasn't announced if he would sign the law or veto it. New York and Maine are considering similar legislation. In Maine the House Judiciary Committee voted 11-2-1 Tuesday in favor of marriage equality.

This morning CQPolitics ran a piece about how even young evangelicals are breaking with their bigoted elders on this issue. Young peole, across the board are far more in favor of marriage equality than the elderly. And it's no different among people of faith.

Leaders of evangelical Christian organizations — the most vocal opponents of gay marriage as the issue polarized the electorate for much of this decade — now face a similar divide in their own ranks. In a survey last fall by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Inc., 58 percent of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 said they support either civil unions or gay marriage; support dropped to 46 percent among white evangelicals who were older than that. (Asked about gay marriage exclusively, the support figures were 26 percent for the younger group and 9 percent for the older group.)

“The data do show a growing divide between younger and older evangelicals. There clearly is a generational difference,” said Amy E. Black, a political scientist at Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Illinois. She characterizes the thinking among many younger evangelicals as, “What big deal is civil unions, really? What I care about is the environment, or what I care about is human rights.”

But it's far from a rose-strewn path for the gay community in their quest for equal rights. The only prominent Republican elected official with the courage to abandon the narrow-minded hate-based approach of the past has been Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who would like to run for president. And Huntsman has been slammed for his position-- not even for same sex marriage, just for civil unions! A a local Michigan Republican club (Kent County) dis-invited Huntsman to speak to them because of his position on ccivil unions. The crazed bigot who leads the local party, Joanne Voorhees wrote in the local newspaper that "The voters want and expect us to stand on principle and return to our roots. Unfortunately, by holding an event with Governor Huntsman, we would be doing the exact opposite."

And Voorhees isn't the only Republican off the rails over this. Earlier today North Carolina's worst member of Congress-- now that is no mean feat-- was on the floor of the House bellowing against the Hate Crimes bill and denigrating the memory of Matthew Shepard. As usual, Virginia Foxx is too demented and disgusting to even write about without puking. Watch her in action:



Earlier today I was on the phone with Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, the Democratic candidate for Congress in CA-45. Steve and his partner adopted adorable twins, a brother and sister who he was talking to me about potty training while we got into the fine points of the Employee Free Choice Act. I couldn't help but think of Steve and his family when a few minutes later a friend sent me this column from today's Chicago Sun-Times about how demented bigots relate to gay families.

The more I reflect upon the practice of society allowing gay "civil unions" but not "marriages"-- the latter term being reserved for heterosexual couples who wed, the argument goes, as God intended-- the more I wonder why those who insist upon the distinction stop there.

What about the children of gay couples? (And yes, they have children, sometimes, just like heterosexual people do.) I'm surprised we don't hear the argument that saying these children are "born" somehow undermines the value of heterosexual couples giving birth to their children. Does it not cast a pall over their joyous event, touched as it is with religious significance?

How much longer will they allow gays to press their agenda by claiming their children are "born" when of course, by entering the world as part of these lesser civil unions, they could easily be relegated to a similarly lesser state?

Perhaps mainstream America would be happier if couples that can form unions but not marry would have children that are "birthed," or "whelped" or "emerge." Instead of a "birth certificate" the couples could be issued a "document of existence."

Sure, we naysayers might point out that doing so would cause discomfort for the affected children, who, when asked where they were born, would have to answer, "Well, I wasn't technically 'born,' but I 'came into existence' in Evanston.'' But since opposition to gay marriage considers neither the feelings of children nor the concerns of their gay parents, it's a little late to start caring about them now.

This afternoon the House voted on the Hate Crimes bill, H.R. 1913, although first they voted on enabling legislation which was opposed by all 175 obstructionist Republicans-- including both closet cases like Adrian Smith (R-NE), Patty McHenry (R-NC), David Dreier (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Aaron Schock (R-IL), etc and the Republican phonies who pretend to be friends of the gay community because of big gay constituencies they're afraid to offend-- like Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Anh Cao (R-LA), Dave Reichert (R-WA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL). Although the resolution passed 234-190 they were joined by 15 homophobic Democratic bigots. When the real vote came, 18 Republicans crossed the aisle to voted with the Democrats (7 less than last year)-- and 17 Democrats crossed in the other direction to declare their bigotry, 3 more than in 2007. The Democrats in today's Hall of Shame:

Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL)
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA) who still hasn't learned his lesson
Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS)
Lincoln Davis (Blue Dog-TN)
Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)
Brad Ellsworth(Blue Dog-IN)
Bart Gordon (Blue Dog-TN)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), whose younger brother is gay
Charlie Melancon (Blue Dog-LA)
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)
John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN)- abstained in 2007
Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS)

(Bolded names are members who voted against hate crimes in 2007)

Isn't that a coincidence! Every single bigot is a Blue Dog! And they call themselves a fiscally conservative caucus; they never tell anyone they're also a hate group because then people will know if you join you get cooties. I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out that Debbie Wasserman Schultz's job at the DCCC is to get these hate-mongers re-elected. If you make a donation to the DCCC, you are making a donation to re-elect sick and demented bigots who are not a bit better than a Republican when it comes to homophobia. A piece of every cent that gets contributed to the DCCC goes directly to help re-elect committed homophobes who are part of Wasserman Schultz's Front Line program: Chris Carney, Travis Childers, Parker Griffith and Bobby Bright. Swear off supporting homophobia and bigotry by swearing off the DCCC. If you want to donate to a better Congress-- to better Democrats-- please consider making a donation to Blue America, which-- since our encounter with Carney-- always makes certain that the candidates we back are supportive of equality.