Even Without A Direct Hit From Isaac, Romney Has His Hands Full

This thing doesn't look like the Unity Convention Romney desperately needs it to be. Last night's David Brooks column in the NY Times-- he's their conservative guy-- was like a harbinger of bad tidings for Romney. The fake bio is probably not Romney's idea of a joke-- not like asking for Obama's passport.

Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the Arrow shirt man.

Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.

Mitt grew up in a modest family. His father had an auto body shop called the American Motors Corporation, and his mother owned a small piece of land, Brazil. He had several boyhood friends, many of whom owned Nascar franchises, and excelled at school, where his fourth-grade project, “Inspiring Actuaries I Have Known,” was widely admired.

...Romney is also a passionately devoted family man. After streamlining his wife’s pregnancies down to six months each, Mitt helped Ann raise five perfect sons-- Bip, Chip, Rip, Skip and Dip-- who married identically tanned wives. Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs.

After a successful stint at Bain, Romney was lured away to run the Winter Olympics, the second most Caucasian institution on earth, after the G.O.P. He then decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. His campaign slogan, “Vote Romney: More Impressive Than You’ll Ever Be,” was not a hit, but Romney won the race anyway on an environmental platform, promising to make the state safe for steeplechase.

After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month campaign, running unopposed. At the convention, where his Secret Service nickname is Mannequin, Romney will talk about his real-life record: successful business leader, superb family man, effective governor, devoted community leader and prudent decision-maker. If elected, he promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

At least no one expects Mike Huckabee to use his prime time speaking slot tomorrow right before Condoleeza Rice for a Mount Carmel Moment on behalf of Todd Akin, who he feels has been wronged. He wouldn't dare cast the Mormon in the role of Baal... would he? Well, he did tell a coven of radical right Baptist preachers that “I’ve never seen an effort like what I’ve seen this week with party leaders coming together expressly for the purpose of taking one of their own wounded soldiers on the battlefield-- and instead of coming to get him off the field and to the hospital-- basically opening up rounds and rounds of fire on him, and then running over him with the tanks of the trucks, leaving him to be ravaged by the wolves of the other side.” He was talking about, among others Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, NRSC Chair John Cornyn, RNC Chair Reince Priebus and Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, among others.

But I sense Huckabee is trying to calm the waters a little. I don't know if he still can, especially not with the other side-- the Country Club Establishment-- still working hard to undermine Akin and force him out of the race. Over the weekend Mary Matalin told ABC News that the Establishment would run a write-in candidate of their own and screw Akin over completely. "We are going to win Missouri and Wagner is going to be our candidate," the former Cheney flack told George Stephanapolous. "The party is going to get Ann Wagner in... Or we’ll run a third party, we’ll run a write-in. We can do it. We have the money to do it. We are going to transfer the money. It’s not as easy. But it’s a good state for Romney and we will get it back." Can Huckabee defuse that kind of derangement?

“Today, the rhetoric was dramatically dialed back,” he said. “You did not see the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, coming out with the kind of harsh statements because they’ve dialed it back. They’ve assured me that they will no longer be threatening the business of some of the vendors in politics and telling them that if they do anything to help Todd, they’d be blackballed and not get any business.

“That kind of stuff’s been going on, and I told these people yesterday that I talked to: That’s got to stop. It can’t continue. That’s what union goons do: breaking people’s kneecaps when you cross a line. And Todd Akin has done nothing but make a mistake for which he has roundly repudiated the comment and apologized. There’s nothing else he can do.”

The NRSC went on record to say Huckabee made up the whole thing and that "no one at the NRSC has even spoken with the governor this week.” Huckabee later admitted he lied but excused lying because his lies were "on my own forums of radio and to the people who choose to receive communications from me." OK. I think he'll make believe there's no such thing as Todd Akin on Wednesday night.

Another one of the kooks, John Yeats, said if David Vitter could survive his multiple prostitution scandals, Akin could weather his problems too. “David had been exposed for going places he shouldn’t have been going. And there were calls for him to step out, but he stayed by his campaign and restored his relationship with his wife. As I think about Congressman Akin, his quote, ‘transgression,’ was not nearly as vile as Vitter’s. So I think this thing is survivable. And beyond survivable, I still think he has a real shot at winning the race here in Missouri. One of the things we have to remind ourselves of and remind our people of is that Congressman Akin represents the mainstream of our values. He is the mainstream of our values.” A fellow Baptist preacher, David Baker, agreed that Akin had to stay in and fight: “We have a responsibility as prophets to speak out. One thing I know about Missouri Baptists is that we don’t like to be told what to do.” Akin is also a Baptist preacher.

So while the Romney folks deal with this insanity on the extreme right of the party-- a nasty fight Romney and Ryan have personally weighed in on-- and in a way that doesn't please the base-- on the more mainstream end of the party they already have a major defection. We're not talking about some desperate publicity hound like Artur Davis looking to get wingnut welfare... we're talking about former Republican Governor Charlie Crist. He endorsed Barack Obama... the day before the convention was due to start in his hometown. And he didn't just endorse Obama; he savaged his old party.

As Republicans gather in Tampa to nominate Mitt Romney, Americans can expect to hear tales of how President Obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around.

But an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they've proven incapable of governing for the people. Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.

The truth is that the party has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership or seriousness voters deserve.

And then beyond the realm of right or left, there's the Ron Paul problem. Maine Governor Paul LePage is boycotting the convention-- some say because Romney laughed when he demanded a speaking slot, but he claims because of the shabby way Ron Paul is being treated. Romney wouldn't let him speak-- not even at his own video tribute Wednesday night!-- unless he endorsed the ticket... and allowed them to edit his speech. He refused both demands, saying he can't endorse Romney until he sees what he's hiding in his tax returns. As for letting the Romneybots have veto-power over what he says... “It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”

What's really at stake in Swiftboat-style propaganda assaults like the Obama hatchet-job books? Oh, it's just the health of our democracy

Liar Jerome Corsi and lie-debunker Paul Waldman last night
on Larry King Live (thanks to Media Matters)


"This book and books like it destroy our political culture, undermine fair elections, inhabit the slippery space between politics and slander. . . .

"These books destroy civic debate on purpose -- and are fundamentally at odds with democracy. The goal of Corsi's project is not to discuss facts -- it is to destroy the very possibility of discussion by implying that a Presidential candidate is a sleeper-cell terrorist -- and doing so in the context of a huge broadcast media effort to convince the country of the same thing.

"That is not just factually wrong. It is wildly immoral. Whether or not Corsi published lies is not even half the discussion we should be having."

-- Jeffrey Feldman, in a Frameshop post today,
"What America Needs to Hear About Jerome Corsi"

by Ken

Every now and then a writer articulates a point that makes a whole bunch of swirling phenomena come into focus for me. Today our Frameshop colleague Jeffrey Feldman (most recently author of Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy) did it with some comments on the debate on last night's Larry King Live between noted liar Jerome Corsi (of the Swiftboat liars) and noted lie-debunker Paul Waldman (of Media Matters, most recently co-author with John Dean of Free Ride: John McCain and the Media).

If you don't immediately recognize Corsi's name, it first came to our attention when he helped orchestrate the Swiftboaters' lies to demolish John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. Now he has dipped into his grab bag of snares and delusions to produce an alleged book (well, it's got covers, and pages with type on them between the covers, and it comes from a company formerly known as a publisher of actual books) that sets out to assassinate the character of the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

PARENTHETICAL DIGRESSION: WOULD YOU BELIEVE
SIMON & SCHUSTER IS PUBLISHING THIS CRAP?

I really didn't pay much attention when I heard that there were two book-form hatchet jobs on Senator Obama coming out. Well, of course there are, I thought. Why wouldn't there be? That's one of the things the Right-Wing Noise Machine does: publish book-form piles of crap to stroke the prejudices of the wingnut faithful and, with any luck, hoodwink a few lazy or gullible readers outside the tent. They've got their own little publishing industry, and their own publishers, like Regnery. Then I gave it as little further thought as possible.

So I was kind of stunned to hear that Jerome Corsi's Obama hatchet job is published, not by Regnery or one of those other make-believe publishers, but by Simon & Schuster! Well, not Simon & Schuster exactly, but an imprint crated by S&S for celebrated right-wing propagandist Mary Matalin.

I don't know what was in the S&S folks' minds. Oh wait, I do. I'm sure some genius reading Publishers Weekly noticed one day that make-believe publishers like Regnery sell a shitload of books to their gullible and brain-challenged readers. And I guess that turned into a mandate: How can we get us some of that boodle? And somebody thought of Mary Matalin, and nobody thought to wonder whether her business plan would be to bring shame upon a publishing house with a long and honorable tradition. Or maybe nobody at S&S cared about that possibility. Heck, there's probably nobody affiliated with the company with any awareness of its history.

I would suggest a vigorous campaign to heap shame upon the current custodians of S&S, except that I doubt there's anybody on the job there who's capable of shame.

From the people I know who watched the Larry King extravaganza, while liar Corsi bombarded viewers with gobs of his made-up "facts," and kept challenging his adversary to answer his "facts," lie-debunker Waldman avoided the trap of debating phony facts and went after the kind of work Corsi does. My sources were all aglow over the job Paul did showing the phony up.

All my sources except Jeffrey Feldman, that is. Oh, he was filled with admiration for the job Paul did standing up to the liar. However --

It saddens me to have to acknowledge that, even though Paul did a great job on Larry King, I think Corsi won the debate -- unfortunately.

Why?

From the very start of the broadcast, Corsi made the debate about 'the facts' and kept returning back to that idea. 'I'm getting out the facts,' 'MM makes ad hominem attacks, but cannot refute the facts,' etc., etc. Paul did a great job pulling back the curtain (amazing job). But King never let the conversation come up to the real issue: this book and books like it destroy our political culture, undermine fair elections, inhabit the slippery space between politics and slander.

Left unsaid here is that it would have been futile, even fatal, for Paul to try to debunk Corsi's fake facts, and if he had tried, he would have ceded the ground to the liar. This is, of course, exactly what the professional liars of the Right-Wing Noise Machine count on.

I don't know that there's anything to be done about it, but I think it's desperately important that those of us who are able and willing to understand what Jeffrey is saying here at least become aware of the nature of the assault on democracy represented by the Swiftboating school of right-wing demagoguing.

At this point I should yield the floor to Jeffrey, who -- it turns out -- has a vision of how last night's debate might have gone differently:

Americans from all over the country have talked about this problem before--the problem of shady right-wing groups that assemble huge private backing and then wade into elections with the purpose of bullying a candidate off the national stage--so this is nothing new. But the media ignores us. Saps like Larry King choose instead to debase the hard work of researchers like Paul Waldman, and to willfully ignore the larger issue here: the wholesale undermining of our civic culture by deep-pocketed right-wing groups with a history of breaking election laws.

What America needs to hear from Larry King about Jerome Corsi is something like,"This book is filth. It goes against everything we believe in about honest, healthy civic debate. Don't buy it. Jerome, you are obviously part of a shady organization that uses money to sell lies with the goal of undermining serious debate in the 2008 Presidential election. The only reason your book is atop the best-seller list is because you have a giant political marketing machine working behind the scenes. Caveat emptor -- buyer beware."

Yeah, yeah. I know. It is hard to imagine someone like Larry King saying that on his show -- hard to even conceive of an America in which journalists use their broadcast power to protect our civic culture rather than promote shadowy figures who seek to destroy it. But imagining it is the first step.

Demanding it is what comes next.

Now this is a fantasy, but it's a pretty fantasy, and I'm afraid -- as Jeffrey suggests -- a necessary one. There's a line in there that's so potent, I think we all need to hear it again, so I'm going to pull it out, with just a tad of elision:

"It is hard to conceive of an America in which journalists use their broadcast power to protect our civic culture rather than promote shadowy figures who seek to destroy it. But imagining it is the first step."


BRAVE NEW FILMS GOES AFTER FOX'S PERENNIAL OBAMA SMEARS

One important weapon we have now against the Right-Wing Noise Machine which we didn't have in 2004 is Robert Greenwald's truth-telling team at Brave New Films. They've issued a new appeal:

The FOX smears are continuing and we need to stop them from spreading to the rest of the media. Watch FOX's laughably inaccurate distortions, as they smear Barack Obama on everything from the economy to race to patriotism to flag pins.

In the coming weeks, FOX will escalate its gross misrepresentations of Obama, and we know from painful past experience that some in the corporate media will spread FOX's canards by presenting them as fact. We must stop the spread.

At the link, along with the video there's a petition to sign, declaring:

"Fox is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Real news organizations must reject Fox's smears of Barack Obama and get the real facts out."

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