Mark Sanford Says He Doesn't Want To Be A Human Piñata, But...

About 3 weeks ago, former South Carolina governor and congressman announced he would probably be announcing a primary challenge to Trump. A practiced liar and career-long phony-- kind of a southern, more genteel version of Trump-- Sanford made a concerted attempt to sound authentic and accessible in his campaign video: "You can track me down at 843-737-1888..." I called and spoke with his secretary for 10 minutes. She said she's have him call me back. It's been 3 weeks; still waiting.

This morning he officially announced he's running on Fox News (video below). His campaign theme is "Sanford: Fiscal Conservative."

[The announcement] comes less than 24 hours after the South Carolina Republican Party voted nearly unanimously not to hold a GOP primary election in the state next year in a sign of loyalty to Trump-- a move being replicated by three other states.

But Sanford has indicated he’s aware of the daunting challenges ahead and the extent to which he will be marginalized by members of his own party, including those in his home state.

He said he plans to run on a platform of restoring fiscal discipline to government decision-making, arguing that politicians-- including the current president-- are doing little to protect the country from an economic meltdown under the weight of the rising national debt.

“No one ‘leading’ in Washington is leading, or even speaking of, our financial predicament,” Sanford said in his email message.

“Presidential races focus our attention to politics and have historically been the stage on which we debate where we go next as a country,” he continued. “If we don’t do it this year, we put that national debate off until the next presidential election cycle. I don’t believe we have five more years before inaction guarantees a day of financial reckoning.”


...In declaring his candidacy, Sanford emphasized he would not make the race personal to Trump. It’s a notable strategy given that the president has gone out of his way to publicly criticize and humiliate Sanford-- on Twitter, at campaign rallies in South Carolina and even in front of Sanford’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill.

“Can you believe it? I’m at 94% approval in the Republican Party, and have Three Stooges running against me,” Trump tweeted most recently, referring to former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh and ex-Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, two other Republicans pursuing primary challenges. “One is ‘Mr. Appalachian Trail’ who was actually in Argentina for bad reasons.”


...Sanford’s desire to make the race issue-focused could ultimately have the effect of failing to energize and mobilize disenchanted Republicans who desperately want to beat Trump in large part because they find his character and behavior unbecoming of the presidency.

Walsh, for instance, has called Trump “completely unfit” for the office in which he serves-- a rallying cry the “Never Trump” contingent longs to hear from one of their own.

Sanford, in contrast, recently told NBC that while he didn’t believe Trump deserved a second term in office, he would still vote for Trump in 2020 if the president gets re-nominated.

As of Sunday, it was still unclear who, if anyone, Sanford has hired to help run his campaign, beyond volunteers or a couple of communications aides.

Members of the close-knit team he fostered during his previous political endeavors have said they don’t plan to join him on this campaign. In a sign of what support he’ll get from fellow South Carolina Republicans, a crowd of conservatives heckled him in late August when he attended U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan’s annual Faith and Freedom Barbecue in Anderson.

It was the the says after my primary loss last June that a buddy of mine called and said 'God just cleared your calendar for a reason; I know what it is." But, no, the buddy didn't want Sanford to come over to help him re-paint his house. He told him God wanted him to primary Señor Trumpanzee. So he is-- on one issue-- the federal deficit. And Trump immediately dubbed him, along with Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, "the three stooges." The GOP, now the Trump Party, reacted with hostility. On Saturday, the South Carolina Republican Party declared there would be no primary next year and Kansas and Nevada are doing easily manipulated causes instead of primaries. The Arizona GOP has also promised the Trump campaign that they will do something to prevent any expression of negativity towards Trump.

"They're more worried than they let on," said Bill Kristol, a #NeverTrump Republican who is trying to encourage primary challengers.

"If you are confident, if you're Donald Trump, if these are just minor irritants, you know what, you beat them all, you crush them all in the primaries and everyone says, 'Wow, look how strong Donald Trump is,' " Kristol said. "If you're shutting down primaries, you're a little nervous about how the dynamic of these primary challenges could go."

Kristol's hope is that one of these long-shot candidates starts to gain traction-- or that someone else gets into the race with an even better chance-- and that somehow, Trump is denied the nomination.

Kristol readily admits "that's unlikely." So a secondary goal is to bruise Trump enough to hurt his chances come November 2020.

That's what happened, most recently, in 1992, when Pat Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary and earned enough delegates to get a prominent speaking slot at the convention. Bush lost that November to Bill Clinton. Since then, presidents of both parties have successfully avoided a similar fate.

Paul Ryan's Anti-Jesus Christ Budget

Yesterday, Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was one of several Democrats on the House floor raging against Ryan's extremely ideological Law of the Jungle budget-- what he referred to as "merely a repackaging of the same extreme agenda that the American people rejected last fall."

“The House Republicans’ budget would again try to end Medicare as we know it by replacing the guarantee of health coverage with a private voucher program that would reduce benefits. This throws seniors back onto the mercy of the private insurance market, while every year giving them less and less of the health benefits they have earned through a lifetime of hard work.

"The Republican budget would not only make permanent the arbitrary, across-the-board budget cuts known as ‘sequestration,’ it would go further-- making even more savage cuts to domestic programs. Critical social services like food stamps, college assistance for low-income families, Section 8 housing, home heating assistance, and Medicaid-- all would face drastic cuts. Under the Republican proposal, our transportation investments would be cut by 20% over the next 10 years, exacerbating the challenges posed by our outdated roads, bridges, and airports. The bill also completely eliminates support for PBS, NPR, AmeriCorps, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

"The Republican budget makes all of these cuts while refusing to cut a dime of military spending. What’s worse, the Republican plan actually reverses planned reductions to military spending by increasing cuts to vital social programs-- a callously unfair proposal that will have terrible consequences for millions of American families.

"To add insult to injury, the bill before us today would make sweeping, regressive changes to the tax code which would raise taxes on middle class families by up to $3,000. Millionaires, however, would actually see a tax cut that averages $245,000 a year. This is just wrong. Working families should never have to pay more just so the rich can pay less, which is just one more reason why we must defeat this bill.

"According to the Economic Policy Institute, the net effect of all of these policies would decrease GDP by 1.7%, resulting in 2 million jobs lost in 2014 alone. If budgets are truly a reflection of our values, then what does it say about the priorities of House Republicans when their budget increases health care costs for seniors, cuts 2 million jobs, and hits middle class families with a tax increase in order to subsidize another tax cut for the rich?"

And just as Ryan was introducing his toxic Austerity Agenda, Cyprus' new right-wing government was verging on the brink of social collapse for adopting their own version of the Ryan Roadmap and... better news... Ryan's 2012 opponent, Rob Zerban announced the formation of an exploratory committee. (In other words... he's running against Ryan again, hopefully, this time with the support of the DCCC, which stood in implacable opposition to anyone taking on Ryan in 2012.) Last year, even with DCCC hostility, Zerban gave Ryan the closest challenge of his Congressional career-- and shaved nearly 20 points off Ryan's average victory margin, even while Ryan was on the national news almost everyday as part of the Romney presidential ticket. It was the closest 2012 Congressional election in Wisconsin and caused Paul Ryan to lose his home ward, his home town, and his home county. Rob:

"Since the election, I have been inundated with phone calls and emails from people all over the First District urging me to come forward again to give the people of Southeast Wisconsin a viable alternative to Paul Ryan. I've been listening to people from Janesville to Racine talk about their need for jobs and economic security, good schools and fair pay, and a strong social safety net for the hardships life sometimes throws our way. The formation of this exploratory committee is simply a formalizing of that process of listening to my friends and neighbors.

"My hope is that, over the next few months, we will begin to have a conversation about what the people of the Wisconsin's First District really want: a secure future, not federal austerity."

A poll released Monday by the very pro-Republican Rasmussen bunch shows Ryan's approval rating sinking like a stone. What a difference a day makes! Last August fully half the voters had a favorable impression of Ryan and less than a third was through him. Now only 35% of likely voters said they had a favorable impression of him, while 54% said they viewed him negatively. Even Republicans-- who once thought Ryan could do no wrong and backed him with a stunning 83% approval-- are not nearly as sold on the bill of good he's peddling. Only a slim majority (52%) of Republican voters approve.

Ryan's toxic budget passed this morning 221-207. Even more interesting than every single Democrat voting NO-- even the worst right-wing shills in the party (like Kirkpatrick, Matheson, Barrow, Negrete McLeod, Schrader and McIntyre)-- is that 10 Republicans voted against it. The Republicans were a mixture of Libertarians, mainstream conservatives and insane neo-fascists who found Ryan "too moderate" (like the 2 crackpot psychopaths competing for the open Georgia Senate seat, Broun and Gingrey). Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison, co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, obviously both voted against it. They issued a joint statement: "Budgets are about choices, and the Back to Work Budget chooses investing in America’s working families. The Republican Ryan budget ignores the results of the 2012 elections and protects the world’s biggest corporations at working families’ expense. The country needs jobs right now, not a budget that takes away health care and gives massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires."

Although Ryan's detractors include many on the lunatic fringe-- like the aforementioned lunatics from Georgia-- the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was horrified by Ryan's jihad against the poor. Although Ryan makes a show of trying to portray himself as a good Catholic, he long ago tossed Jesus' message aside for the admittedly anti-Christian greed-and-selfishness preachings of his favorite childhood story teller, Ayn Rand. Watch:

In twin letters sent to the House and Senate, the bishops said they “support the goal of reducing future unsustainable deficits, but insist that this worthy goal be pursued in ways that protect poor and vulnerable people at home and abroad.”

The bishops blasted the Ryan budget as failing to meet certain “moral criteria” by disproportionately cutting programs like food stamps that “serve poor and vulnerable people.”

...The bishops said the revamped plan would “drastically cut” spending by $800 billion over 10 years.

“This figure is very concerning, since 70 percent of the spending in this budget category goes for programs to help poor and vulnerable people,” they wrote.

The bishops warned the Ryan budget would likely slash safety net programs likes Pell Grants, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, school lunches and the Earned Income Tax Credit, among others.

Ryan first drew the ire of the bishops last year when he said his Catholic faith helped shape his budget plan.

He said that by accelerating the debt crisis, President Obama’s policies will be more damaging to the poor. Ryan also said the USCCB doesn’t represent the views of all Catholic bishops.

The USCCB shot back, saying the officials who penned the congressional letters were elected to represent the bishops on policy matters at the national level.

After you watch Rand trying to whitewash the Robber Barons during her 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, take a look at the clip below from the History Channel:

Mike Wallace (1918-2012)

In a feature at the top of today's Face the Nation broadcast, Morley Safer remembers his longtime 60 Minutes colleague Mike Wallace. (Sorry about the commercial, but it should be only 15 seconds.)

"Mike took to heart the old reporter's pledge to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

-- Morley Safer

by Ken

Like everyone else remembering Mike Wallace, I suspect, Morley Safer refers early on to "the four dreaded words" that preceded his "visits" to an unsuspecting subject of one of his surprise interviews: "Mike Wallace is here." I wonder, though, how many eulogists are also remembering that "old reporter's pledge" Morley tells us Mike "took to heart": "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." (Least of all, one suspects, his son Chris, who has made a successful career dragging the family name through the muck of Fox Noise as a thuggish right-wing liar-apologist-propagandist.)

Those of us who are old enough to remember way-back-when remember Mike Wallace as a not especially high-toned TV jack-of-all-trades, whose best-known role may have been that of cigarette pitchman. It was hardly the profile of a future crusading investigative journalist. Indeed he was hardly an obvious fit for CBS News when he signed on in 1963, as Adam Bernstein recalls in his Washington Post obit:

At the time, the so-called "Tiffany network" that had once been home to newsman Edward R. Murrow had the most prestigious pedigree. [Of course this is itself forgetting Murrow's rather various CBS broadcast career, including the celebrity gushfest Person to Person. -- Ed.] Mr. Wallace had a hard time getting anyone to take him seriously.

He later recalled: “The people at CBS said, ‘You mean to say that we’re going to have the fellow who’s measuring the quarter-inch filtered tip of the Parliament cigarettes? That's the same guy who's going to be measuring the missile gap? Not on CBS.' "

But Mr. Wallace said he was determined to change his image as a lightweight. He said he was motivated in large part by the accidental death, in 1962, of his teenage son Peter while hiking through Greece. The elder Wallace took a series of demanding assignments to prove his worth: a tour in Vietnam, on-air reporter for the "CBS Evening News" and questioner on the public-affairs show "Face the Nation."

Viewers who know CBS News only from its Village-friendly outlook of recent decades may wonder what standards Wallace could have been aspiring to when he joined the organization. It sure ain't what it once was, and 60 Minutes in particular ain't. It wouldn't be far off to suggest that the goal became to comfort the comfortable and further afflict the already-afflicted. The "scandals" it uncovers these days generally turn out to be affronts to the well-heeled and high-positioned, pillars of the Village elites and the status quo.

#

Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

"The most trusted man in America," in 1981

Here's a nice obit by Newark Star-Ledger TV critic Alan Sepinwall.

I loved Walter. I don't have that many heroes, but he was one of them. Even after he was forcibly retired from CBS News, his annual presence lent a note of authenticity to the annual Vienna New Year's Concert.

I happened to have a TV tuned to our local Fox station from the evening's earlier Seinfeld rerun, and was shocked that on their noisecast later they turned for personal comment to Fox Noisemaker Chris Wallace, on the ground that as the son of CBS Newsman Mike Wallace he would have grown up around Walter. What little I managed to listen to was relievingly respectful, considering that Chris Wallace's career has been devoted to defecating on the journalistic values of his father and Walter Cronkite.

It was a good life, one well-lived. Thanks, Walter. -- Ken


UPDATE: Thank God Republicans Can't Dance

In case you thought the grieving for national icon Walter Cronkite is universal, you probably don't pay much attention to the Republican Party base that Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Ensign, Mike Pence, Eric Cantor, Mark Sanford, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are all fighting over. Turns out the kinds of people who make it possible for Republicans like Catherine Crabill (R-VA) and Jim DeMint (R-SC) to run for office didn't feel comfortable with someone as dedicated to Truth-- and in such an uncomfortably public way-- as Walter Cronkite. Fox is their medium and unadulterated hate is their message:

I hope his sorry carcass rots for the next thousand years and he has to live with the stench of his own body. Most trusted man in America!!?? I spit on his lies and only regret that I'll never get the chance to dance on his grave!!

Wow-- a new Joe the Plumber in the making. Which John McCain figure in conservative politics will validate this one?

I had two comments on my Facebook page about this that I want to share. You may remember the former lead singer of Romeo Void, Debora Iyall. As usual, she didn't mince words:

"That's so ugly it's in the leprous bowels of ugly."

Neither did John Cline:

Funny how that is.

When William F. Buckley died, with few exceptions, the liberal blogs and comment streams were fairly kind, even lamenting the loss of a worthy foe. The vitriol was, as I remember, fairly scattered.

When Walter L. Cronkite died, with almost no exceptions, the conservative blogs and comment streams have been filled with hateful, disrespectful, factually unsound, and apparently frothing-at-the-mouth vitriol. The kind of stuff you would expect to hear at a KKK keg-party after a particularly gratifying lynching.

So what does this mean? That convervatives are rapidly turning into drooling sop-witted brutes with the civility of a pack of hungry mastiffs? Or that liberalism is the last refuge for the civil, the sophisticated, the intelligent, the thoughtful, and the creative?

Perhaps both are true.

-- Howie

AFTERTHOUGHT FROM KEN: THEY DON'T EVEN
KNOW WHAT WALTER'S POLITICS WERE

Wow, that's some scary stuff. It didn't even occur to me that that would be going on. I wonder if poor Chris Wallace just didn't feel free to say what's on his mind -- at least while his father is alive?

I don't suppose there's much point in pointing out to those, er, people that they have no idea what Walter Cronkite's politics were, because he never talked about them and kept them out of his reporting.

Well, I guess they know he wasn't one of them, and that's all they need to know. And they don't believe in "reporting" anyway, at least as it used to be understood, having to do with gathering the facts of a story, since as we know, the facts are biased.

#