The Devil's Bargain-- Republican Religion

On Friday, Trump AG William Barr spoke at the Notre Dame Law School, decrying the ascendancy of secularism and vowing "to do all he can to assure continued religious freedom for Americans." More a political hack for the far right than an actual Attorney General, Barr babbled, incoherently to the students that "Among the militant secularism are many of the so-called progressives, but where is the progress? We are told we are living in a post-Christian era, but what has replaced the Judeo-Christian moral system?"

Trudy Ring's piece for The Advocate puts the lie to the manufactured grievances Barr and the rest of the Trumpists are trying to stir up among religious-right voters. This weekend was the annual the Values Voters Summit-- nothing more than a GOP conclave-- and progressive evangelicals Vote Common Good went... and got kicked out by the Trump-oriented anti-Jesus Family Research Council.

It’s been said that it’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness-- and that’s what the progressive Christian group Vote Common Good aims to do at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit.

“We want to just be a small candle in the corner of what tends to be a pretty dark narrative,” Doug Pagitt, cochair and executive director of Vote Common Good, told The Advocate in an interview ahead of the event.

...The list of speakers at this year’s VVS, which opened Friday at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., reads like a who’s who of homophobes, including FRC President Tony Perkins, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, current Congressman Louie Gohmert, International Religious Freedom Ambassador Sam Brownback (set to appear Saturday night with Trump), and many more. Anti-LGBTQ sentiment is, of course, not the only thing the conference is about-- there are sessions devoted to anti-abortion activism, opposing gun restrictions, resisting “socialism,” and other causes close to the religious right’s heart.

But Vote Common Good will be represented at the VVS to show there’s an alternative path for religious believers, including evangelical Christians-- they don’t have to be part of the Christian right, Pagitt said.

The word evangelical is often associated with conservative Christianity. One of its definitions in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.” Another is “marked by militant or crusading zeal.” And evangelicalism is sometimes connected with Christian fundamentalism, a belief that everything in the Bible is to be taken literally.

But Pagitt, who describes himself as an evangelical pastor of a nondenominational church in Minneapolis, said there’s not a single agreed-upon definition of evangelicalism, although there are some general guidelines as to what it means. People who identify as evangelical, he said, tend to have a deeply personal sense of faith, organized around the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and use the Bible as a guide to living. What his faith has guided him to is a belief in inclusion, of love for all people, including LGBTQ people.

“For many of the people who are in this movement, it has been the fight to include gay and lesbian people in their churches that has pushed them,” he said.

He and Vote Common Good also break with the Christian right on a variety of other issues. The group opposes the criminalization of abortion and limitations on contraception. It supports political action to reduce environmental destruction, poverty, gun violence, and international conflicts. These are all part of the priorities Pagitt calls the “four P’s”-- people, poverty, peace, and the planet.

...At the Values Voter Summit, Pagitt is promoting his organization’s “Love-in-Politics Pledge,” which urges leaders to act with the kind of love described in the New Testament’s First Corinthians, which says in part, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

“It seems the opposite of what Donald Trump does in his life and his political positions,” Pagitt said.

The group doesn’t have a spot on the conference stage-- to obtain that, it would have to agree to a set of beliefs that Vote Common Good doesn’t endorse. So Pagitt and his colleagues will be spreading the word about the pledge in public spaces at the Omni. “We’ll do it with a wink and a smile,” he added, not by being disruptive.

Doug, in the den of the Beast

Maybe smiling is a no-no, because the Vote Common Good folks were kicked out of the event. Saturday, Pastor Pagitt wrote to Vote Common Good supporters that they went to the VVS "with a mission: Bring together Christians who are interested in elected officials who will lead in the way of love. And they kicked us out. The Family Research Council kicked us out because they are afraid. They’re threatened. When we engage in conversation with Christian voters, those people will realize that their values compel them to vote for the common good-- which means voting against Donald Trump and his allies, including the Family Research Council. They’re scared of losing support. We didn’t go to the Values Voter Summit with a mission of division or hate. We traveled to unite Christian voters behind our Love-in-Politics Pledge, calling on faith-full voters to support candidates who lead in the way of love. We are disappointed, but sadly not surprised, that the Family Research Council rejected our outreach. But we will persist. Our message of love resonates with Christians all across America. We know that when our movement opens up the conversation, others will join us."

Doug told me that he had requested a media pass last week, which had been turned down. They were told though that, with permission from the hotel, they could make recordings.  "When we arrived they changed that. They stopped up from recording ourselves in the hallway. We stopped recording. Then they came back 10 minutes later and said, 'we are revoking you participation and you must turn in your registration badge.' When we asked for the reason we were told, 'we don’t need to give you a reason. You need to turn in your badge and leave immediately or you will be escorted out by the city police.' Then we were told that we could not be in the part of the hotel where the conference was being held. We did as instructed after asking about a refund for our registration. We were told that we would have to email their office and request a refund."

Is that part of William Barr's Judeo-Christian moral system? They go mad when they hear this kind of thing-- which he wrote on Thursday in conjunction to Ralph Reed's upcoming book, Render to God and Trump-- from influential pastors like Doug Pagitt:

Ralph Reed has chosen Jesus’ statement to "Render to God what is God’s and to Cesar what is Cesar’s" for his argument calling Evangelical voter’s to support Trump. He should have however considered Jesus' other statement, "what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose their very soul."

Just as Reed has misread the "Render" passage-- it has nothing to do with giving blind allegiance to a President, so, I assume he would misread the "lose your very soul" quote.

Jesus was of course not referring to a an afterlife narrative of heaven or hell-- in fact Jesus never spoke of those dimensions.

Jesus was referring to losing the very sense of one’s self, losing touch with reality, losing, your own core self, becoming endlessly awash in the whims of the day.

And, that is precisely what Reed and the Right Wing religious fanatics he leads have done-- they have lost their souls, or some might say, "their minds."

I am reminded of the old joke about a stock trader who when he heard Jesus’ warning that you could gain the whole world and lose your soul responded by saying, "actually that’s a pretty great deal. Think about it, the entire world… for just one soul." It seems Reed has made that same calculation.

And, he is even willing to call his Christian fringe of followers to go down to the trading floor with him.

As it turns out Reed will not actually get the "whole world" in this trade. He will get a Tumpian, gold-plated, knock-off version of it. Because in the end, Trump will lose on November 3, 2020. And, as it turns out so will Ralph Reed and all the others who make this Devil’s bargain.

Which Trump Ally Is More Dangerous To America-- Vladimir Putin or Matt Bevin?

This is kind of a Part II of the Brexit post from earlier this evening. There are plenty of Democrats-- including many who I like and respect-- who don't believe that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was significant. I disagree, extremely so. I'm far from a Clinton supporter, but I feel absolutely certain that Trump would not be in the White House today had Putin not decided to make a big push to put him there. If you follow DWT, you probably know that I believe Russia did a lot more than fiddle around with social media to get Trump into office. But yesterday Craig Timberg and Tony Romm, penned an article for the WashingtonPost on a new report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, that shows the scale and sweep of the operation the Russians used to saddle the U.S. with the world's most incompetent and incapable leader. The Russians, the report for the Senate Intelligence Committee asserts, "used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests" to get the bad joke of a failed businessman and penny-ante entertainer into the Oval Office and the Russians have continued working as a divisive force backing Trump's worst tendencies to divide Americans and turn us against each other.

The report "offers new details of how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for meddling in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found."

The data sets used by the researchers were provided by Facebook, Twitter and Google and covered several years up to mid-2017, when the social media companies cracked down on the known Russian accounts. The report, which also analyzed data separately provided to House Intelligence Committee members, contains no information on more recent political moments, such as November’s midterm elections.

“What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party-- and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Trump is mentioned most in campaigns targeting conservatives and right-wing voters, where the messaging encouraged these groups to support his campaign. The main groups that could challenge Trump were then provided messaging that sought to confuse, distract and ultimately discourage members from voting.”

...The new report offers the latest evidence that Russian agents sought to help Trump win the White House. Democrats and Republicans on the panel previously studied the U.S. intelligence community’s 2017 finding that Moscow aimed to assist Trump, and in July, they said investigators had come to the correct conclusion. Despite their work, some Republicans on Capitol Hill continue to doubt the nature of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.

The Russians aimed particular energy at activating conservatives on issues such as gun rights and immigration, while sapping the political clout of left-leaning African American voters by undermining their faith in elections and spreading misleading information about how to vote. Many other groups-- Latinos, Muslims, Christians, gay men and women, liberals, Southerners, veterans-- got at least some attention from Russians operating thousands of social media accounts.

The report also offered some of the first detailed analyses of the role played by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, and Instagram, owned by Facebook, in the Russian campaign, as well as anecdotes about how Russians used other social media platforms-- Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest-- that have received relatively little scrutiny. The Russian effort also used email accounts from Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail service and Google’s Gmail.

The authors, while reliant on data provided by technology companies, also highlighted the companies' “belated and uncoordinated response” to the disinformation campaign and, once it was discovered, criticized the companies for not sharing more with investigators. The authors urged that in the future they provide data in “meaningful and constructive” ways.

Facebook, for example, provided the Senate with copies of posts from 81 Facebook pages and information on 76 accounts used to purchase ads, but it did not share posts from other user accounts run by the IRA, the report says. Twitter, meanwhile, has made it challenging for outside researchers to collect and analyze data on its platform through its public feed, the researchers said.

Google submitted information in an especially difficult way for the researchers to handle, providing content such as YouTube videos but not the related data that would have allowed a full analysis. The YouTube information was so hard for the researchers to study, they wrote, that they instead tracked the links to its videos from other sites in hopes of better understanding YouTube’s role in the Russian effort.

...Facebook, Google and Twitter first disclosed last year that they had identified Russian meddling on their sites. Critics previously said it took too long to come to an understanding of the disinformation campaign, and that Russian strategies have likely shifted since then. The companies have awakened to the threat-- Facebook, in particular, created a “war room” this fall to combat interference around elections-- but none has revealed interference around the midterm elections last month on the scale of what happened in 2016.

The report expressed concern about the overall threat social media poses to political discourse within nations and among them, warning that companies once viewed as tools for liberation in the Arab world and elsewhere are now threats to democracy.

“Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike,” the report said.

Researchers also noted that the data includes evidence of sloppiness by the Russians that could have led to earlier detection, including the use of Russia’s currency, the ruble, to buy ads and Russian phone numbers for contact information. The operatives also left behind technical signatures in computerized logs, such as Internet addresses in St. Petersburg, where the IRA was based.

Many of the findings track, in general terms, work by other researchers and testimony previously provided by the companies to lawmakers investigating the Russian effort. But the fuller data available to the researchers offered new insights on many aspects of the Russian campaign.

The report traces the origins of Russian online influence operations to Russian domestic politics in 2009 and says that ambitions shifted to include U.S. politics as early as 2013 on Twitter. Of the tweets the company provided to the Senate, 57 percent are in Russian, 36 percent in English and smaller amounts in other languages.

The efforts to manipulate Americans grew sharply in 2014 and every year after, as teams of operatives spread their work across more platforms and accounts to target larger swaths of U.S. voters by geography, political interests, race, religion and other factors. The Russians started with accounts on Twitter, then added YouTube and Instagram before bringing Facebook into the mix, the report said.

Facebook was particularly effective at targeting conservatives and African Americans, the report found. More than 99 percent of all engagement-- meaning likes, shares and other reactions-- came from 20 Facebook pages controlled by the IRA, including “Being Patriotic,” “Heart of Texas,” “Blacktivist” and “Army of Jesus.”

Together, the 20 most popular pages generated 39 million likes, 31 million shares, 5.4 million reactions and 3.4 million comments. Company officials told Congress that the Russian campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and 20 million more on Instagram.

The Russians operated 133 accounts on Instagram, a photo-sharing subsidiary of Facebook, that focused mainly on race, ethnicity or other forms of personal identity. The most successful Instagram posts targeted African American cultural issues and black pride and were not explicitly political.

While the overall intensity of posting across platforms grew year by year-- with a particular spike during the six months after Election Day 2016-- this growth was particularly pronounced on Instagram, which went from roughly 2,600 posts a month in 2016 to nearly 6,000 in 2017, when the accounts were shut down. Across all three years covered by the report, Russian Instagram posts generated 185 million likes and 4 million user comments.

Even though the researchers struggled to interpret the YouTube data submitted by Google, they were able to track the links from other sites to YouTube, offering a “proxy” for understanding the role play by the video platform.

“The proxy is imperfect,” the researchers wrote, “but the IRA’s heavy use of links to YouTube videos leaves little doubt of the IRA’s interest in leveraging Google’s video platform to target and manipulate US audiences.”

The use of YouTube, like the other platforms, appears to have grown after Trump’s election. Twitter links to YouTube videos grew by 84 percent in the six months after the election, the data showed.

The Russians shrewdly worked across platforms as they refined their tactics aimed at particular groups, posting links across accounts and sites to bolster the influence operation’s success on each, the report shows.

“Black Matters US” had accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Tumblr and PayPal, according to the researchers. By linking posts across these platforms, the Russian operatives were able to solicit donations, organize real-world protests and rallies, and direct online traffic to a website that the Russians controlled.

The researchers found that when Facebook shut down the page in August 2016, a new one called “BM” soon appeared with more cultural and fewer political posts. It tracked closely to the content on the @blackmatterus Instagram account.

The report found operatives also began buying Google ads to promote the “BlackMatters US” website with provocative messages such as, “Cops kill black kids. Are you sure that your son won’t be the next?” The related Twitter account, meanwhile, complained about the suspension of the Facebook page, accusing the tech company of “supporting white supremacy.”

Of course, you can argue that we hardly need Russians to sew discord when we have Republicans like Matt Bevin, the governor of Kentucky, eager to do it himself. Speaking at the extreme right Values Voter Summit in Washington Saturday, Bevin's extolled physical violence against liberals degrading society. He told a largely neo-fascist audience that "America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case."

If you think lame duck governors in states like Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin are up to no good by shitting the beds in their states' governor's mansions before their Democratic successors moved in, Bevin went a step further-- urging far right Republicans like himself to be ready to shed blood if Democrats elect someone like Hillary. Insinuating that the neo-Nazi scum at the conference are patriots, he appropriated a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants... Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen." Matt's speech, in the original German:

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit.

Die Straße frei den braunen Bataillonen.
Die Straße frei dem Sturmabteilungsmann!
Es schau'n aufs Hakenkreuz voll Hoffnung schon Millionen.
Der Tag für Freiheit und für Brot bricht an!

Zum letzten Mal wird Sturmalarm geblasen!
Zum Kampfe steh'n wir alle schon bereit!
Schon flattern Hitlerfahnen über allen Straßen.
Die Knechtschaft dauert nur noch kurze Zeit!

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

A couple of days ago, Señor Trumpanzee was the first sitting president to speak at the Family Research Council's annual hate fest. While we shouldn't be surprised that a psychopath would eagerly attend an American hate group's conference to lend encouragement and endorse their activities, a lot of people were surprised (incredulous is a better word) when our madman "leader" of the free world made the bold faced claim that his (and their) agenda is "substantially ahead of schedule." Sure, there is zero doubt that the Trumpanzee is an over the top boastful megalomaniac whose pathological lying knows no bounds, yet his kool-aid saturated crowd cheered and stomped with their drooling approval just the same. When he punctuated his statement with his standard "Believe me." They did.

The mob at the Family Research Council's so-called Values Summit is a virulent bunch. They look at the influx of "damn foreigners" into our country (documented undocumented alike) and they scream that they "want our country back." Back from whom? Back from "those people." They long for a time when caucasians were the vast majority of the population in this country. That time is gone and isn't coming back, short of genocide, of course; something that, judging from their statements and social media pages, many of these fake christians would be all for. They don't want to live in a country and world where the influx of what they call, in the words of one of their heroes, republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore, "browns" and "yellows" continues. They see the races mixing because we no longer have segregation and they are appalled. If you want to really get them going, just tell them that "brown babies" are just part of the millennia-long evolution of humankind. Make sure to say 'humankind' and not 'mankind.' Hell, just the word 'evolution' will send their blood pressure heading for the moon. Want to take it further and watch the fun? I have. It's easy. After bringing up evolution and/or the inevitability of race mixing, just bring up something, anything about gay people. Damn. You could bake a whole wedding cake using just the heat coming off their foreheads!

Homophobia was well-represented at the "Values Summit." The swag bag given to attendees even included a bonkers brochure titled "The Health Hazards Of Homosexuality." The brochure pushes a book that claims no one is "born gay" and that homosexuality is an "attack on 'traditional marriage'. Yeah. Whatever. Keep in mind that we not only have a thrice-married serial adulterer and admitted predator in the White House, we also have a VP that thinks gay kids should have their homosexuality electrocuted right out of them. No doubt, this crowd eagerly would watch such a thing on TV for hours; if only "the media" wasn't "controlled by liberals."

So, look at all of these hats in the today's meme. Look at all those things Trump voters voted for Trump for. The hats put the lie to his claim of being "substantially ahead of schedule" with his agenda. In truth (not that truth matters to his supporters) the Trumpanzee has failed to get even one single piece of legislation passed into law. That's a very good thing, given what he wants to do to America and its Constitution. but, as exemplified by his attacks on Obamacare, he has done a lot of damage to the lives of Americans. Why, it's enough to make you wonder just who he's working for. Believe me.

Those hats represent a catalog of lies he got elected on. The Values Summit attendees and the rest of his supporters don't seem to have any problems with the promises left unkept. To this point, there is only a slight erosion in the Trumpanzee's support among republicans. The vast majority of Trump's supporters still love him. Apparently, the unkept promises don't bother them one bit. Ask yourself why, despite all these broken promises that were obviously insincere from the get-go, Trump's voters still support their man. Look at the hats. Do you see what's missing? Do you see what Trump has stayed true to? Do you see the core, base value that Trump has delivered on and delivers on on a daily basis? Do you see what Senor Trumpanzee has not backed off of one bit? Do you see why, despite all of his failures, they still cheer him?

The answer is racism and bigotry. Those are the core values of Trump, his party, and his voters. They are number one, by far. He can break any promise and fail to deliver on any of his promises but those that enhance racism and bigotry. Attacking president Obama's Iran deal and Obamacare (and any of his achievements), appointing Jeff Sessions as AG and Betsy DeVos as Secretary Of Education are just four examples of manifestations of Trumpian bigotries. Racism and bigotry are the easiest for Trump to deliver on. You can deliver on those with just emotion and words. No legislation required, although, to his voters, that would be very nice, too. Trump has emboldened racists and bigots of every kind everywhere, and not just in Charlottesville. For that, Trump's voters love him and will continue to do so. Such very fine people.

Not Just The Worst President In History, Also The Most Anti-Gay President In History

People in America are used to it but Brits were astonished enough so that one of their newspapers, The Independent ran a headline saying Donald Trump to become first president to speak at anti-LGBT hate group's annual summit. They were talking about that ValueVoters Family Research Council hate fest yesterday. "The Family Research Council," they wrote, "opposes and actively lobbies against equal rights for LGBT persons. The conservative Christian group campaigns against same-sex marriage, same-sex civil unions, LGBT adoption, abortion, embryonic stell-cell research, pornography and divorce. Every year the conference sparks controversy for its choice of speakers and in 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a legal advocacy organisation which specialise in civil rights, went so far as to classify the Family Research Council as an anti-gay hate group. Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, condemned President Trump's decision to address the event. 'By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBT people and works to deny them of their equal rights,' he told The Independent. 'His appearance puts the lie to his campaign promise to be a friend to the LGBT community. Bigotry is not an American value, and our president should speak out against it.'"

Coincidentally, the Daily Beast conjectured that the morons of the gay persuasion who were stupid enough to vote for Trumpanzee last year no longer see him as the great straight hope. He sure hasn't lived up to his ridiculous promises to be a champion for the gay community. (Exit polls indicate that 14% of gay voters-- all 14% sick, stupid and self-loathing-- pulled their levers for Señor Trumpanzee.)

The Trump administration’s record on LGBT issues has been defined by retrenchment, both sides concede. Many of the advances made under the Obama administration have disappeared, replaced by policies and directives that could have been written by an anachronistic social conservative instead of the cosmopolitan New York businessman occupying the Oval Office.

“I think, personally, the president has met my expectations,” said Chris Barron, a longtime conservative gay-rights activist. “My concern has always been what happens at the department and agency levels. And I definitely have concerns with what is going on at Department of Justice. The attorney general [Jeff Sessions] has a very different position on LGBT issues than the president does. But his job is to carry forward the president’s agenda and not push his own… I’m certainly concerned he is [pushing his own].”

Among gay-rights advocates, few had higher hopes for this White House than Barron. He was largely responsible for arranging for Trump to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011-- an event credited with helping bring the reality TV star into the GOP mainstream. And though the activist occasionally soured on Trump’s campaign, Barron also launched an LGBTers for Trump group and championed the argument that the Republican nominee would be inherently better for the community than Hillary Clinton. After the election, Barron wrote that Trump would be an ally, friend, and advocate.

Instead, Barron and others are alarmed at the direction the administration is taking. Trump is responsible for some of it, having signed a directive banning the recruitment of transgender troops. But much of it has originated from his agencies. The Justice Department has changed its position on whether sexual orientation is covered under the Civil Rights Act, withdrawn federal protections for transgender kids in schools, and said it will not prosecute organizations who cite religious objections when declining to serve gay customers.

Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services quietly withdrew a 2014 rule that would have required longterm-care facilities to recognize same-sex marriages when deciding visitation rights and decision-making responsibilities. The agency argued that the legalization of same-sex marriages by the Supreme Court made the ruling moot, but advocates warned that it would open the doors to discrimination. This week, the National Park Service abruptly decided to withdraw its sponsorship of New York’s pride flag, which had been dedicated at the iconic Stonewall National Monument.

“Trump’s supporters like to say, ‘It’s not what he says, it’s what he does that matters.’ That’s definitely the case when it comes to issues affecting LGBT Americans,” said Jimmy LaSalvia, who started the now-defunct conservative gay rights group GOProud along with Barron. “I never thought that Donald Trump was an anti-gay homophobe. I certainly didn’t think that when I met him back in 2011. But we’ve all learned a lot about who he really is since then. With his political pandering and posturing to endear himself to the intolerant wing of the GOP over the last few years, it doesn’t surprise me that this administration will go down as the most anti-LGBT in history.”

It gets better. Oh... and does Mother know?

How Did The Republican Party Allow Itself To Be Taken Over By A Wack Bunch Of Neo-Nazis?

A gathering Of American Neo-Nazis-- a powerful fringe of Trump's Republican Party-- will feature their newest heroes: Bannon and Roy Moore.

In less than two weeks-- October 13-15-- the extreme right of the Republican Party will gather for their annual bund rally at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in DC. Announced speakers include hate mongers and racists like Michele Bachmann, Sebastian Gorka, Laura Ingraham, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, a couple of Duck Dynasty guys, Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney, Mat Staver, Dana Loesch, Mark Meadows (R-NC), Oliver North, Paul Ryan (R-WI), Mark Walker (R-NC), Jeff Sessions and, as a human piñata and target for derision, Miss McConnell (R-KY). Oh and Señor Trumpanzee will be making an appearance as well. But, according to Breitbart News, the keynote speeches won't be given by Trumpanzee or Speaker Ryan or Sessions but by American neo-Nazi strategist Steven Bannon and his Alabama candidate for Senate, ex-Judge Roy Moore.

The far right hate group, Family Research Council, hosts the annual event, which bills itself as "the single largest gathering" of... well they call themselves "social conservatives," but it is basically a neo-Nazi gathering in the nation's capital. Too harsh? Nope. Let's look at Joseph Bernstein's report this week for BuzzFeed on how the Mercer and Bannon run Breitbart News smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist ideas into the heart of the Republican Party.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right-- the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum-- and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website-- and, in particular, Yiannopoulos-- links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails-- some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public-- expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

...Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos's post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

...Early in the morning of August 17, 2016, as news began to break that Steve Bannon would leave Breitbart to run the Trump campaign, Milo Yiannopoulos emailed the man who had turned him into a star. “Congrats chief,” he wrote.

“u mean ‘condolences,’” Bannon wrote back.

“I admire your sense of duty (seriously).”

“u get it.”

In the month after the convention, Yiannopoulos and Bannon continued to work closely. Bannon and Marlow encouraged a barrage of stories about Yiannopoulos’s late July ban from Twitter. Bannon and Yiannopoulos worked to distance themselves from Charles Johnson’s plans to sue Twitter. (“Charles is PR poison,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Charles is well intentioned--but he is wack,” Bannon responded.) And the two went back and forth over how hard to hit Paul Ryan in an August story defending the alt-right. (“Only the headline mocks him correct,” Bannon wrote. “We never actually say he is a cuck in the body of the piece?”)

But once Bannon left Breitbart, his email correspondence with Yiannopoulos dried up, with a few exceptions. On August 25, after Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon, “I’ve never laughed so hard.”

“Dude: we r inside her fucking head,” Bannon wrote back.

And on September 15, Sebastian Gorka, then an adviser to the Trump campaign, sent Yiannopoulos, Bannon, and Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s future national security adviser, a meme “as found on Twitter.” Watermarked by a conservative satire site called the Patriot Retort, the image was titled “The Deplorables,” and had superimposed various TrumpWorld faces on top of the all-star action movie heroes of the 2010 Sylvester Stallone vehicle The Expendables.

“I presume you Gents approved of this,” Gorka wrote.

“THIS IS BRILLIANT. CC’ing LTG Flynn,” Flynn, Jr. wrote back, referring to his father.

“LOL!” Bannon responded.

“Yes. I’m jealous!!” Gorka replied.

Still, as the campaign progressed into the fall, there were clues that Bannon continued to run aspects of Breitbart and guide the career of his burgeoning alt-right star. On September 1, Bannon forwarded Yiannopoulos a story about a new Rutgers speech code; Yiannopoulos forwarded it to Bokhari and asked for a story. On the 3rd, Bannon emailed to tell Yiannopoulos he was “trying to set up DJT interview.” (The interview with Trump never happened.) And on September 11, Bannon introduced Yiannopoulos over email to the digital strategist and Trump supporter Oz Sultan and instructed the men to meet.

There were also signs that Bannon was using his proximity to the Republican nominee to promote the culture war pet causes that he and Yiannopoulos shared. On October 13, Saucier emailed Yiannopoulos a tweet from the white nationalist leader Nathan Damigo, who went on to punch a woman in the face at a Berkeley rally in April of this year and led marchers in Charlottesville: “@realDonaldTrump just said he would protect free speech on college campus.”

“He used phrases extremely close to what I say-- Bannon is feeding him,” Yiannopoulos responded.

Yet, by the early days of the Trump presidency-- and as the harder and more explicitly bigoted elements within the alt-right fought to reclaim the term-- Bannon had clearly established a formal distance from Yiannopoulos. On February 14, Yiannopoulos, who months earlier had worked hand in glove with Bannon, asked their mutual PR rep for help reaching him. “Here’s the book manuscript, to be kept confidential of course… still hoping for a Bannon or Don Jr or Ivanka endorsement!”

The next week, video appeared in which Yiannopoulos appeared to condone pedophilia. He resigned from Breitbart under pressure two days later, but not before his attorney beseeched Solov and Marlow to keep him.

“We implore you not to discard this rising star over a 13 month old video that we all know does not reflect his true views,” the lawyer wrote.

Bannon, ensconced in the chaotic Trump White House, didn’t comment, nor did he reach out to Yiannopoulos on his main email. But the machine wasn’t broken, just running quietly. And it wouldn’t jettison such a valuable component altogether, even after seeming to endorse pedophilia.

After firing Yiannopoulos, Marlow accompanied him to the Mercers’ Palm Beach home to discuss a new venture: MILO INC. On February 27, not quite two weeks after the scandal erupted, Yiannopoulos received an email from a woman who described herself as “Robert Mercer’s accountant.” “We will be sending a wire payment today,” she wrote. Later that day, in an email to the accountant and Robert Mercer, Yiannopoulos personally thanked his patron. And as Yiannopoulos prepared to publish his book, he stayed close enough to Rebekah Mercer to ask her by text for a recommendation when he needed a periodontist in New York.

Since Bannon left the White House, there have been signs that the two men may be collaborating again. On August 18, Yiannopoulos posted to Instagram a black-and-white photo of Bannon with the caption “Winter is Coming.” Though he ultimately didn’t show, Bannon was originally scheduled to speak at Yiannopoulos’s Free Speech Week at UC Berkeley. (The event, which was supposed to feature an all-star lineup of far-right personalities, was canceled last month, reportedly after the student group sponsoring it failed to fill out necessary paperwork.) And Yiannopoulos has told those close to him that he expects to be back at Breitbart soon.

Steve Bannon’s actions are often analyzed through the lens of his professed ideology, that of an anti-Islam, anti-immigrant, anti-“Globalist” crusader bent on destroying prevailing liberal ideas about immigration, diversity, and economics. To be sure, much of that comes through in the documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The Camp of the Saints Bannon is there, demanding Yiannopoulos change “refugee” to “migrant” in a February 2016 story, speaking of the #war for the West.

Still, it is less often we think about Bannon simply as a media executive in charge of a private company. Any successful media executive produces content to expand audience size. The Breitbart alt-right machine, embodied by Milo Yiannopoulos, may read most clearly in this context. It was a brilliant audience expansion machine, financed by billionaires, designed to draw in people disgusted by some combination of identity politics, Muslim and Hispanic immigration, and the idea of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the White House. And if expanding that audience meant involving white nationalists and neo-Nazis, their participation could always be laundered to hide their contributions.

Yiannopoulos’s brand is his ego. Yet his role within the media ecosystem-- building an audience around identity politics in the era of news organizations relying on social media for growth-- makes him far less unique than he might believe. More and more outlets are firing writers and dumping resources into video. Given that trend, and particularly after Charlottesville, when the alt-right has proved a troublesome audience to court, it’s possible that Yiannopoulos’s use to Bannon has dwindled.

Or perhaps it hasn’t. For Bannon, of course, Yiannopoulos’s future was always in video, in spectacle. 2017 has provided plenty of spectacles that have gotten great ratings. Before it imploded, Free Speech Week had the potential to be the latest.

And the two men know the value of making a scene. In June 2016, Yiannopoulos, with Bannon’s enthusiastic support, planned to lead a gay pride march through a “Muslim ghetto” in Stockholm. Though Breitbart would later cancel the event over security concerns-- Yiannopoulos expressed concern in private repeatedly-- the Breitbart tech editor was in joking good spirits on June 26 when he wrote to Bannon of a “killer plan.”

“If I die doing this I expect a blackout on Breitbart.com for AT LEAST this afternoon,” Yiannopoulos wrote.

A few hours later, Bannon responded.

“And miss all the traffic in condolences?”

UPDATE: Nazi Murders Back In Charlottesville

Saturday night, Richard Spencer-- the sick Nazi who likes being punched in the face-- led another Republican/Nazi Party tiki torch march through Charlottesville. Mike Signer, the city's mayor sent a tweet denouncing the march: "Another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards. You’re not welcome here! Go home! Meantime we’re looking at all our legal options. Stay tuned." But the Nazi leader responded "You will not erase us... We are about our heritage. Not just us Virginians. Not just as Southerners. But as white people . . . we’ll take a stand. You’ll have to get used to us. "We’re going to come back again and again and again." Then they began singing about Dixie and chanting "The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo."

Kentucky's Deplorable Governor Matt Bevin-- A Modern Day Beriah Magoffin?

Last night we looked at the "rabid" support Señor Trumpanzee is getting in some of the desperate parts of Kentucky, including in Perry County, which has the lowest life expectancy of any county in the U.S. "When you ain't got nothin'," in the words of Kris Kristofferson "you ain't got nothin' to lose." How could these people be so stupid, is not the appropriate response, at least not for many of them. Especially when the highest ranking official in the state, Governor Matt Bevin is stirring people up towards bloodshed if his man Trumpanzee loses in November. You can watch Bevin in the video above at the Values Voter Summit GOP HateFest in DC last week. As Peter Montgomery explained at RightWingWatch.org, "numerous speakers at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit suggested that the American republic might not survive a Hillary Clinton presidency. During the Obama administration it has become almost routine to hear far-right leaders talk about the possibility of armed revolution against the federal government. But it was still jarring to hear a sitting governor suggest that America might only survive the election of Hillary Clinton through bloodshed."

But Bevin, a deranged teabagger and notorious hate-monger took it to a new level for a sitting governor, actually inciting violence and murder if Trumpanzee loses, as seems likely.

Bevin recounted a story from his college days about how he confronted a professor who he said mocked Christianity, the way liberals always do: “They try to silence us. They try to get us to shut our mouths. They try to embarrass us. Don’t be embarrassed. We were not redeemed to have a spirit of timidity.” He urged young people, “Be bold. There’s enough Neville Chamberlains in the world. Be a Winston Churchill…There are quite enough sheep already. Be a shepherd.”

American freedom, Bevin said, was “purchased at an extraordinary price,” saying that one and a half million Americans have given their lives in uniform. “America is worth fighting for. America is worth fighting for, ideologically.”

“I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically,” said Bevin. “But that may in fact be the case.” He explained that it might take the shedding of the blood of tyrants and patriots for America to survive a Hillary Clinton presidency.

When the Civil War broke out, Abraham Lincoln asked Kentucky's governor, pro-slave lunatic Beriah Magoffin to supply troops to help put down the rebellion. Magoffin responded that he would "send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister Southern states." Kentucky officially declared neutrality in the conflict but in the next elections pro-union forces elected veto-proof majorities in the legislature and 9 out of 10 congressmen. Eventually Magoffin resigned in disgrace and the South invaded Kentucky and were repulsed with much blood spilled. Do you think Bevin sees himself as a latter day Magoffin? Read his own words:

Somebody asked me yesterday, I did an interview and they said, “Do you think it’s possible, if Hillary Clinton were to win the election, do you think it’s possible that we’ll be able to survive? That we would ever be able to recover as a nation? And while there are people who have stood on this stage and said we would not, I would beg to differ. But I will tell you this: I do think it would be possible, but at what price? At what price? The roots of the tree of liberty are watered by what? The blood, of who? The tyrants to be sure, but who else? The patriots. Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children. It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something, that we through our apathy and our indifference have given away.

Does anyone doubt Trump is a spark for divisiveness and even dissolution? Could Hillary have had Bevin's attitude in mind when she talked about the deplorables last week?

Ted Cruz, Führer Of The Value Voters Summit Neo-Fascist Fringe

All my friends think I'm crazy for asserting-- all year-- that the Republicans will pick Ted Cruz as their sacrificial lamb to face Hillary in 2016. Some of them are deluding themselves that Hillary will even be the nominee-- pure wishful thinking-- but most point to polls that show Cruz is way down at the bottom of the pack. CNN's Sept 11 poll of New Hampshire Republicans shows Cruz at 6%, ahead of Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, but way behind Rand Paul (15%), Jeb Bush (10%), Paul Ryan (10%), Chris Christie (9%), Huckabee (9%) and even trailing non-starters like Rick Perry, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. In a poll of Iowa GOP caucus goers, a pretty extremist cohort where you might expect Cruz to do well. He didn't. Huckabee leads with 21%, followed by Ryan at 12%, Rand Paul at 7% and then Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker slightly ahead of Cruz who is tied at 4% with Jindal and still managing to stay ahead of Santorum (3%).

Other state polls show that when you test various Republican contenders against Hillary she kicks all their asses but usually kicks Cruz's ass worse than the rest of 'em. Late in August PPP did such a test in North Carolina. Hillary beat Cruz by 6 points. Huckabee nearly tied her and Rand Paul, Jeb Bush both did better than Cruz. Only Christie-- who Hillary beats by 7-- did worse than Cruz, mostly because Republicans worry he's headed for a long-drawn out scandal over Bridgegate and related (and unrelated) criminal activities.

Those polls don't matter-- and Cruz knows it. Most Republican voters are idiots-- its a requirement of the position-- and don't even know who he is yet. But they will-- and the tip of the spear that leads the rest of the shaft around knows exactly who he is and what he stands for. And they know he's their candidate. The hard right hated McCain, hated Romney… they hate McConnell and Boehner and… they hate everyone. They think they like Reagan but that's only because he's as dead as their brain cells. They'd hate him today too. In fact, in his brilliant new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein reminds us that in 1968, when Reagan was the very conservative governor of California, rightwing extremists tried launching a recall effort against him for not being extreme enough! But Cruz they like. He's a no-compromise, neo-fascist fanatic… the most right-wing federal elected official in America-- and very aggressively so. And it's their turn.

Republican Party Elders know Hillary is going to be the next president anyway-- so why not let the kooks and nuts have their moment in the sun… and take the fall? Well, there are some very good reasons why not, as a matter of fact. Here are 10 of them:

• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)
• Ron Johnson (R-WI)
• Richard Burr (R-NC)
• Rob Portman (R-OH)
• Rand Paul (R-KY)
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)

Those are 10 Republican senators in mostly purple states who all have to run for reelection in 2016-- in states Hillary is likely to win. Ten-- that's a lot. And then there's the House. The DCCC will have a new chairman, who, even if not a brain surgeon, has to be better and more competent than Steve Israel-- and willing and able to win back at least couple dozen House seats, including from powerful Republican chairmen Israel refuses to engage-- from Fred Upton (R-MI), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and John Kline (R-MN) to Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Ed Royce (R-CA). A couple dozen is a lot too-- especially when you put party leaders in the mix. A Hillary landslide would leave the GOP House caucus a shrunken Confederate rump run by ranting and raving anti-American extremists. Nice!

On the other hand, if they don't placate the far right now, they're going to make a fuss in the future when a Republican could actually win. Besides, the far right is strong now and is prepared to make a case for Cruz. Yesterday, the GOP's lunatic fringe had their annual Value Voters Summit. Cruz was-- far and away-- the star. He was given the position that would have been called the keynote speaker and he made the best of it, pandering to the religionist hate mongers like no Republican has been able to do as effectively since the Joseph McCarthy days, a fascist who sounded, looked and thought jvery much like Cruz does today.

The crowd was dismissive of Rand Paul and his intellectual libertarianism, which went way over the heads of this Ted Cruz red meat crowd. Remember, last year, Cruz won the straw poll that this gathering of extremists held.

With a clarion call to preserve religious liberty, Sen. Ted Cruz solidified his support from evangelical Republicans at the annual Value Voters Summit Friday in Washington, a connection that could pay off if he decides to join the hunt for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

“There are people in Washington who say that in order to win we have to abandon our values,” Cruz, of Texas, said during his 30-minute address. “Our values are who we are. Our values are why we are here.”

While shifting demographics, including a projected boom in Latino voters, have led some Republican strategists to urge the party to take moderate positions on social issues like birth control and gay marriage, the Value Voters Summit is a notable exception. Sponsored by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization, exhibit-hall booths feature graphic anti-abortion posters, T-shirts with traditional-marriage slogans and photos of Ronald Reagan.

In short, it's remains a place where red-hot conservative rhetoric still sells. And featured GOP speakers like Cruz gave them plenty of it.

During his speech, the freshman senator and Tea Party favorite touched on everything from repealing “every word of Obamacare” to protecting religious organizations from having to provide birth control to workers. He accused Democrats of being the “extreme radical party” and vowed to do everything in his power to ensure that Republicans win the Senate in the midterm election so Majority Leader Harry Reid, the top Democrat, loses his job.

"We will turn this country around,” Cruz said. “We don’t paint in pale pastels, we paint in bold colors.”

UPDATE: Cruz Wins Lunatic Fringe Vote Again

Two years in a row for Ted Cruz-- although by a smaller percentage this time. Last year he won 42% of the Value Voters Summit votes and this year it was just 25%. Ben Carson came in second with 20%-- followed by Huckabee (12%), Santorum (10%), Rand Paul (7%) and Bobby Jindal (7%). So now we know who the most extreme elements in American politics want to have as the GOP 2016 nominee. Let's hope they get their way!

How Many Republicans Are Already Wondering How It Would Have Been Different If A "True" Conservative Had Been Their Nominee?

Many American voters are wondering why Romney didn't have George W. Bush at his convention in Tampa and why he doesn't use him in his campaign. People have actually told me it's disrespectful of the last Republican president and of all the people who voted for him. Clinton's masterful participation in Obama's Charlotte convention brought it into even greater focus. As Greg Sargent noted in his Washington Post column Saturday, "the Obama campaign believes that true undecided voters see Clinton as a kind of “referee” figure on the economy-- hence the ad’s back-to-back footage of Clinton and Obama both making the case that electing a Republican president would take us back to the policies that got us into trouble in the first place. Clinton will play a major role in trying to get swing voters to feel that things are indeed recovering."

But Romney has no time for George W. Bush. He's using his spokespeople to go all-in for vicious racism and full on delusional divisiveness. As former Bush speech-writer and advisor David Frum put it this weekend, while discussing 2016, Obama's America, "Dinesh D'Souza nicely sums up the issue in this election: black people want your house and Obama will give it to them."


Friday night many people noted that when Clinton left the White House to Bush, the Dow was at 10,587 (on Bush's inauguration day). When Bush left, Obama got a Dow at 7,949.09 (on his inauguration day). Friday the Dow closed at 13,593.37. Just stating this makes right-wing financial nerds go into orbit... but, whatever it means or doesn't mean, it's a cold hard fact, that the Fox bubble mentality can't erase.

For all the hundreds of millions of dollars sociopathic billionaires like mobster Sheldon Adelson and John Birchers David and Charles Koch have been shoveling into Romney's campaign, the whole operation is already teetering on the brink of collapse. Journalist Dave Weigel sniffed around a meeting of the Republican non-financial base over the weekend, the annual Values Voter Summit-- which Ayn Romney withdrew from at the last minute-- but which Paul Ryan found himself as one of the headline speakers. One of the dominant figures of aggressive right-wing bigotry and hatred is Bryan Fischer-- and he didn't like Ryan's attempt to turn the HateFest into a pep rally for the disintegrating Romney campaign. Dave talked with disappointed homophobe Fischer after Ryan's speech.

"He didn’t say one single word about marriage,” says Fischer. “This is the safest environment in the United States of America to talk about marriage. I’ve got to believe that that came from on top. Marriage won 61-39 in North Carolina-- in 2012! That’s in a state that President Obama won in 2008. Marriage is a winner. It’s just a mystery to me that they won’t touch this thing."

He shrugs. "Mitt Romney should be leading by 10 or 15 points. The fact that he’s not is Mitt Romney’s problem. It’s because he’s run such a lackluster campaign that’s been so vague on ideas."

Weigel talks with other right-wing activists who go into greater depth about what Frum exposed-- that the whole GOP enterprise is based on racism and hatred of poor people-- that Obama and the Democrats have made people dependent on the government. And then there's the lunatic from Georgia in the tri-corner hat, William Temple: "We picked probably the weakest candidate we could. Someone like a Herman Cain or a Michele Bachmann would have ’em fired up." No doubt. And John Heilemann had an even worse prognosis for the flailing Mormons and corporate executives running Romney's operation: Desperate.

For Romney, the first blaring sign that his reaction to the assault on the consulate in Benghazi had badly missed the mark was the application of the phrase “Lehman moment” to his press availability on the morning of September 12. Here was America under attack, with four dead on foreign soil. And here was Romney, defiantly refusing to adopt a tone of sobriety, solemnity, or seriousness, instead attempting to score cheap political points, doubling down on his criticism from the night before that the Obama administration had been “disgraceful” for “sympathiz[ing]” with the attackers-- criticism willfully ignoring the chronology of events, the source of the statement he was pillorying, the substance of the statement, and the circumstances under which it was made.

That the left heaped scorn on Romney’s gambit came as no surprise. But the right reacted almost as harshly-- with former aides to John McCain, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan creating an on-the-record chorus of disapproval, while countless other Republican officials and operatives chimed in anonymously. “This is worse than a Lehman moment,” says a senior GOP operative. “McCain made mistakes of impulsiveness, but this was a deliberate and premeditated move, and it totally revealed Romney’s character; it revealed him as completely craven and his candidacy as serving no higher purpose than his ambition.”

This bipartisan condemnation would have been bad enough in itself, but its negative effects were amplified because it fed into a broader narrative emerging in the media across the ideological spectrum: that Romney is losing, knows he is losing, and is starting to panic. This story line is, of course, rooted in reality, given that every available data point since the conventions suggests that Obama is indeed, for the first time, opening up a lead outside the margin of error nationally and in the battleground states. So the press corps is now on the lookout for signs of desperation in Romney and is finding them aplenty-- most vividly in his reaction to Libya, but even before that, in his post-convention appearance on Meet the Press, where he embraced some elements of Obamacare (only to have his campaign walk back his comments later the same day).

The peril to Romney’s candidacy of being seen through the lens of desperation can’t be overstated. The paramount strategic objective of any campaign is to maintain control of the candidate’s public image-- and if the media filter begins to view his every move through a dark or unflattering prism, things can quickly spin out of control, to a point where nothing he says or does is taken at face value. “Romney is in a very bad place,” says another senior Republican strategist. “He’s got the Republican intelligentsia second-guessing him, publicly and privately. The party base has never trusted him and thinks that everything bad it ever thought about him is being borne out now. And he’s got the media believing that he can’t win. He’s right on the edge of a self-fulfilling downward spiral.”

Even Herman Cain might have done better. In 2016, I bet the Republicans aren't going to saddle themselves with another Wall Street-approved Establishment shill like McCain or Romney. Next time they'll want to go down fighting for someone they really believe in... how about an Allen West-Jan Brewer ticket? Think how happy the Values Voter Summit would be over that one! Some pundits are interpreting polls to prove that severely right-wing voters have already abandoned Romney and will sit the election out. "The numbers," writes Tom Dougherty, "are clear that self-described conservatives are not supporting Governor Romney in sufficient numbers to win the election. Additionally there is anecdotal evidence that Evangelicals and Tea Party supporters are not embracing the Romney-Ryan ticket at levels that would be expected.

Obama has a 7% greater support level among liberals than Romney has among conservatives, and a 6.8% favorable delta among likely voters who are “bolting from the base.” Without any demographic adjustment, using the raw data from the polls in those five states, Obama has an average lead of 2.5%.

If conservatives were supporting Governor Romney at the same level liberals are supporting President Obama, without any change to the level of support from self-described moderates, Romney could have a 4% plus lead in five states that have a total of 73 electoral votes

With my current electoral map showing Obama with 237 votes and Romney with 222, 73 votes is the ballgame, and by a comfortable margin.