Politicans who hide inside the Fox Bubble: A national problem for the American press

-- by Dave

Yesterday on CNN's Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz briefly mentioned something that deserves some greater scrutiny:

KURTZ: I also want to get to Sarah Palin. You know, there was that incident where she referred to a couple of journalists on the Anchorage television station who were overheard, a phone call, either joking around or looking for dirt on Republican nominee Joe Miller, in that Senate race, as corrupt bastards. They later lost their jobs.

And here's more of what the former governor had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH PALIN (R), FMR. ALASKA GOVERNOR: First, let me make it clear that nobody has constrained me being here as a contributor to Fox. I still talk to whomever I want to. I will not talk to reporters who have an obvious bias or a vendetta, or are going to turn my words into something that they are not meant to be and take things out of context.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Shepard Smith had asked her if she wasn't kind of protected within the Fox family and if this would change this.

(CROSSTALK)

SESNO: -- Katie Couric.

KURTZ: But, excuse me, what reporters, as Palin talked about, outside the Fox bubble? I'm not aware of this.

SESNO: I don't think she has in a meaningful way. And the question whether she should. And the answer is, of course she should.

Of course, none of them had any real answers. After the obligatory hand-wringing, they moved on to other subject.

But it's worth pointing out that it's not just Palin: a number of candidates followed her advice not to speak to any reporters who aren't from Fox News Channel, with varying degrees of success:

Alaska's Joe Miller, who even went so far to avoid local reporters he had some militia thugs handcuff one, and shove several others around.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who most notably fled to exclusively appearing on Fox after being asked to explain her 'headless bodies' claims.

Christine O'Donnell, who pretty closely hewed to Palin's advice.

Sharron Angle, who actually ran away from local reporters but was always happy to get airtime on Fox.

Rand Paul, who not only stiffed Meet the Press after his disastrous Rachel Maddow interview, but also pulled an Angle, actually running away from local reporters after making an appearance on Fox News.

You'll notice, of course, that most of these politicians were also unsuccessful -- but not all. Both Paul and Brewer won going away.

No doubt, in the future, Republican candidates will be modeling themselves after these two and adopting this strategy -- especially as Fox News becomes more openly active in promoting Republican candidates exclusively. More and more candidates are going to avoid answering questions from the press, both national and local, content in the knowledge they can "get their message out" through the friendly auspices of the Fox Propaganda Channel.

This kind of political behavior is anti-democratic, because it means candidates can run entire campaigns in which they can avoid any kind of public accountability whatsoever.

And that's a serious problem for our democracy -- one that ultimately lies at the feet of the nation's media, whose traditional role as the Fourth Estate underpinning our democracy is being destroyed by the Fox News phenomenon.

Because Fox News has been permitted to gradually transform itself from an obviously right-leaning news network into an outright 24/7 conservative propaganda operation -- one that, functionally speaking, has grown beyond being a mere arm of the GOP and is now itself controlling the Republican Party -- because the rest of the press has stood by silently and allowed it to do so.

Everyone surveying the political landscape today can see that Fox News is indeed a pure propaganda operation dedicated to electing conservative Republicans -- after all, nearly the entire slate of GOP presidential candidates for 2012 is on the Fox payroll. The Tea Parties would not exist were it not for the incessant promotion they received from Fox. For that matter, 2010 election results were not the result of a grand Republican comeback strategy, but the incredible media power that Fox flexed in the two years after Obama's election, effectively seizing hold of the national political narrative and driving it to where they wanted it to go.

It's completely unprecedented. And perhaps the most amazing thing about it has been watching the nation's watchdogs in the media -- not just the Howard Kurtzes, but everyone in the journalism business who has an ounce of respect for the profession -- stand by and say nothing.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The dream GOP ticket (for Democrats): Sarah Palin and Haley Barbour

-- by Dave

If anything makes me feel warmer and fuzzier about the GOP presidential field for 2012 than Sarah Palin, it's when they seriously discuss Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor, as Fox News has in naming him one of their "12 for 2012" likely presidential candidates.

Yesterday, Bret Baier hosted a segment featuring Barbour. It included this brief and hilariously whitewashed discussion of Barbour's years as a lobbyist and Republican political kingpin:

In the 60s Barbour worked on President Nixon's campaign. In the 80s he was President Reagan's director of politic affairs. In the 90, he served two terms as chairman of the RNC. He joined the ranks of the Washington animal, the K Street lobbyists.

LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: He was one of the premiere lobbyists of Washington, D.C.

BAIER: Larry Sabato says that could hurt Barbour if he were to run.

SABATO: Given the American public's view of lobbyists, it's difficult to imagine he would be elected with that qualification.

BARBOUR: "Washington insider" to some people means corrupt or bad. For other people it means knows how to get things done, can get the ball in the end zone.

Actually, that's not the half of it: Barbour's tenure as RNC chief was made particularly memorable by the incident in which he propped up the RNC by borrowing millions from a Chinese businessman -- and then welshing on the loan:

Twice in two years Hong Kong businessman Ambrous Tung Young bailed out the party at crucial moments: first freeing up as much as $2 million in the final days before the G.O.P.'s 1994 sweep of Congress; then eating $500,000 in bad debts, rescuing Republicans in the last weeks of the 1996 contest. The conduit for the money was a U.S. firm with little income and few assets, but quietly backed by an aviation-services and real estate-investment company controlled by Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen. The money passed through a Republican think tank that granted big donors more influence over party policy in return for more money. For Young, the arrangement also opened diplomatic doors. In Washington, Young met face to face with the lions of the G.O.P. just as they were taking over Congress. In Beijing a year later, he escorted G.O.P. chairman Haley Barbour in a meeting with Qian Qichen, Foreign Minister for the People's Republic of China.

How a Chinese businessman came to prop up the G.O.P. is a story that began in 1993, right after Bill Clinton's election. Barbour had just taken over as G.O.P. chairman and created a think tank to generate new ideas. He called his group the National Policy Forum, and although its operations were two blocks and a few legal documents removed from Republican headquarters, it was just an extension of the party. Barbour was chairman of the forum; G.O.P. officials set its $4 million annual budget and coordinated fund raising. The forum circulated 600,000 questionnaires to identify the hot-button issues that were later assembled into the Contract with America.

The forum had a hidden purpose: to tap into a new stream of cash from corporations. G.O.P. fund raisers discovered in 1992 that there was only so much soft money available; most donors had given all the money they could to campaigns. But because corporations set aside other tax-deductible money for research, Barbour's idea was to create a nonprofit think tank that could attract that cash.

Instead the think tank started to cost the party money. Corporate America turned out not to be very interested in the forum, so by the summer of 1994 it was heavily in debt, largely to the R.N.C., which had loaned the forum several million dollars to get started. With the pivotal midterm elections bearing down, the party needed money to attract voters to the polls with a burst of TV ads.

... But by mid-1996 the forum was strapped again. The last thing the party wanted that summer was to bail out a think tank just when the campaigns for Congress were heating up. So Barbour decided that the forum would simply stop repaying the Signet loan. He tried instead to get Young Bros. to foot the bill. Through its lawyers, the company refused.

And then Signet called in the loan. At first Barbour refused to pay the $1 million balance due. When the Youngs' lawyers threatened a lawsuit, the forum paid up $500,000, but that still left an angry Young with a $500,000 loss--sparing the R.N.C. from having to dip into campaign finds to pay off the rest of the debt.

Barbour told TIME last week that the guarantee and settlement were "perfectly legal and totally appropriate."

It's kind of funny, actually, how Barbour has managed to resurrect his career from the wreckage of that fiasco. But let's not forget how he managed to do that: by openly consorting with white supremacist organizations and promoting the Confederate flag, then winking and nudging when finally called on it.

Why, he sounds like just the ticket. I would especially look forward to the visuals of the corpulent, corrupt Barbour with his Mississippi drawl running against Barack Obama.

If only we could be so lucky.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Good Government: The Time to Reform the Senate's Filibuster is Now

-- by Dave

We all remember the famous filibuster scene at the climax of Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, with Jimmy Stewart finally collapsing at the end of a marathon session in which he (as always) Stands Up For What's Right.

It's a somewhat romantic view of the filibuster, since in reality it was used historically mostly as a means of blocking progressive legislation such as anti-lynching and civil-rights bills, and its most famous practitioners were bigots like Theodore Bilbo and Strom Thurmond. Nonetheless, it has been a useful tool for progressives, too, as it was occasionally useful for Democrats in the darkest days of the Bush Years as a means of slowing down the right-wing wrecking ball.

But in the old days, it was a rarely used tool, mainly because it required senators to actually do the Jimmy Stewart thing -- devote themselves to maintaining a running speech for the required time period, as well as to maintain enough colleagues in the chamber to sustain it.

That practice gradually subsided with Senate rules reforms in the 1970s, though, so now all you have to do to filibuster is signify your intent to filibuster: check a box and it's a fait accompli. Here's the result:

[image display="original" link="source" alt="cloture.jpg" width="425" height="246" id="6875"][/image]

What has occurred, in point of fact, is that a determined group of Republicans has altered, through the adoption of purely obstructionist tactics that abuse the rules of the Senate, its operation in a way that clearly alters its functioning as the Founding Fathers intended the Senate to operate: that is, as a deliberative body in which the majority -- not a supermajority -- rules.

Functionally speaking, a supermajority is now required for anything to happen in the Senate. (That, incidentally, is why you saw the dropoff in cloture votes in 2010: filibuster "holds" were placed on nearly every single bill that was introduced, gumming up the works so profoundly that only a tiny handful were even able to proceed to a cloture vote.)

Interestingly enough, post-election polling of the people who voted Tuesday found that a large majority of Americans agree that something needs to change:

Exclusive results of of a new poll conducted for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee by venerable Democratic pollster PPP show 64% of voters contacted Tuesday and Wednesday said it was time to get rid of the legislative blocking maneuver used so often by Republicans since 2009. Just 23% said they'd like to preserve the practice, which President Obama has often decried and some Democrats have moved to abandon with little success.

The widespread opposition to the filibuster crosses party lines, the survey showed. Among Democrats, who saw much of their legislative agenda tied up in the Senate by Republican filibusters this year, 77% called for an end to the practice of effectively requiring a 60-vote majority to pass bills. Fifty-seven percent of Republican respondents said they opposed the filibuster, as did 61% of independents.

The beauty of it is: If Democrats act decisively and boldly, they can enact these changes with only 51 senators. But it has to happen on the first day of business in the Senate.

Tom Udall has been arguing for making this bold decision now:

And so what the Constitutional Option is about is doing rules reform in the Senate at the beginning of a Congress and the crucial thing is that at the beginning of Congress you can set rules with 51 Senators. You can end the debate and you can adopt new rules. Now is the time for rules reform.

[embed id="156" width="400" height="241"]

Jeff Fernholts at TAP thinks so too.

I spent awhile on the phone yesterday with Mike Zamore, Sen. Jeff Merkley's chief of staff, to sound out whether there was any likelihood of getting reform done in January -- and what it would look like. Here's what he told me:

Zamore: The goal here is not to simply allow a majority to run over the minority and to reduce the roadblocks. The goal is to restore a measure of deliberation and get back to the essence of what those rules were intended to do.

So the basic premise is yes, let's make it harder to filibuster, to put the burden on those who want to obstruct rather than on the majority. And let's raise the stakes of filibustering, so that the decision is not undertaken lightly. You know, you've got to put some sweat equity into if you're going to hold up the will of the majority.

There's another piece to it. We should also be making it easier for those senators -- or for all senators -- to get their ideas to the floor, and if we're going to be raising the stakes in filibustering, then we also ought to be giving more opportunities to have ideas kicked around on the floor of the Senate before a bill comes to a vote.

So those two pieces kind of go hand in hand.

We're still trying to hash it out, but the basic concept would be that there would be some kind of default rules for deliberation that, in the absence of some other negotiated terms for bringing up a bill, would govern, and that those would allow alternating amendments between Democrats and Republicans and some fixed amount of debate and a chance to get those things voted on. So that would be one piece. And the other piece would be that, in exchange, filibustering would require some greater level of active engagement on the part of those who want to filibuster.

There's lots of discussion out there about various ways to make a filibuster look like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And we're exploring those possibilities, and figuring out a way to make it so that, if you want to block the majority from acting, you've got to be down on the floor and making the case. You can't just check a box and walk away.

In the end, a Merkley or Udall rules reform plan would look something like this: The filibuster is not eliminated, but rather the rules will actually force anyone filing one to debate, and it would require a specific number -- say, 10 or 12 senators -- to back it up by remaining on the floor for the entire length of the filibuster to sustain it.

It would be, in essence, the return of the Senate not just to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but to actual majority rule and not the now-defacto rule by supermajority. These kinds of measures would end the abuse while still retaining the filibuster as a tool to block the most extreme anti-popular measures, such as abolishing Social Security or repealing health-care reform.

Ezra Klein, who has been arguing for this change for a long time, explained last spring that the change came about through a combination of the loosening of rules and the sudden development of a minority absolutely hellbent on total obstruction by any means necessary:

In 1975 the Congress lowered the threshold once again, to three fifths of Congress, or 60 votes.

In theory, the filibuster should have become less common as it became easier to break. Unfortunately for the theory, between 2007 and 2010 the Senate had to call 214 cloture votes to break filibusters. That's more than had to be called between 1919 and 1976. And remember, 2010 is only three months old.

That's true, in part, because the minority party has started forcing more cloture votes even when it knows it'll lose. The goal is to slow the Senate to a crawl. After you call for cloture, you need to wait two days to take the vote. After you take the vote, there's 30 hours of post-cloture debate. And you can do this on the motion to debate, on amendments, on the vote on the bill itself … on everything, really. A single, committed crank (cough, Jim Bunning) can waste weeks forcing the majority to break his filibusters.

Of course, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth about this from the Fox News contingent. But the package that's being proposed actually has a great deal to offer both sides of the aisles; no doubt Republicans can readily see how opening up the rules to permit the minority now to bring its ideas to the floor more readily would work to their advantage in the immediate future.

More to the point, it would make the Senate operate the way it was intended in the Constitution. (The filibuster is not in the Constitution, by the way; as Austin Frakt explains, it exists more as an accident of the history of Senate rules.)

And aren't all these newly elected arch-conservatives devoted to the Constitution?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Hmmmmm. Media Matters must really be getting under Bill O'Reilly's skin

-- by Dave

Memo to Bill O'Reilly: There's a reason people in the media -- especially people with even a small bone of ethics in their bodies -- object to major media anchors suggesting it's OK to beat people up: It's profoundly irresponsible. Sure, you can say it's just a joke, but everyone who works in the media knows there are kooks out there who take that kind of stuff literally and act on it, which is what makes doing it so irresponsible. Or didn't you learn your lesson with Dr. Tiller?

Indeed, it seems that BillO learned at least one lesson from that episode: If you are so irresponsible as to abuse your position media power by indulging in reckless violent and eliminationist rhetoric, there is at least one entity with enough guts to call you on it: Media Matters.

Because now he's just outright hearing voices in his head as soon as the words came out of his mouth that he wanted to beat up the Washington Post's Dana Milbank for slagging Megyn Kelly's election-night work. And while it's true that Milbank's examples were weak, the reality is that Milbank's larger point was right: the entire night's broadcast overseen by Kelly was one long gloatfest, victory lap after victory lap for the election's real winner: Fox News.

But all throughout the segment, O'Reilly vacillated between wishing thuggery upon both Milbank and his boss, WaPo's Fred Hiatt, and worrying that his saying so might bring those evil nattering nabobs from Media Mattes down upon his head.

All I can say is: Good.

At one point, Kelly wondered why he's so obsessed with Media Matters. Why, he should just do as she does: Don't your pretty little head over such things. O'Reilly made clear why not: This was a man thing. He didn't say it, but the clear answer was: His manhood was being challenged.

And it's true. His manhood is being challenged. Because O'Reilly in the end is a chickens--t BS artist and a bully and a coward, and Media Matters regularly calls him out on it.

And you know what? O'Reilly isn't even man enough to bring them on his show and let them have their say.

Because no one -- NO ONE -- ever goes on Fox and criticizes it. It just isn't permitted. And especially not on O'Reilly's show.

Want to talk about manhood? A real man would bring his toughest critics on and face them. Until O'Reilly actually invites David Brock or Eric Burns onto his show, we'll know that all this talk is hot air.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Patty Murray's victory is rich with lessons for Democrats

-- by Dave

Whew! Our friend Sen. Patty Murray has managed to pull out her re-election:

Murray's win over Republican Dino Rossi was confirmed Thursday as tallies pushed her lead to about 46,000 votes out of more than 1.8 million counted, or about 51 percent to 49 percent. About three-quarters of the expected ballots had been counted in unofficial returns.

Though many ballots still await processing, but an Associated Press analysis determined Murray's lead would be insurmountable.

"Now we have to get to work," Murray said Thursday night. "I want to make sure Washington state has what it needs to get its economy back on its feet." Rossi conceded defeat.

Of course, it's tempting to simply gloat over Rossi's loss, which is now his third straight narrow defeat for statewide office. Considering what a slimy git he is, one can't help being relieved that he is finally probably all done, washed up in politics after striking out a third time. But hey -- considering his record, maybe we shouldn't be so eager. After all, he could become Washington's own mini-version of Harold Stassen and run again in two years for Maria Cantwell's seat. Go for the Golden Sombrero, dude!

But there are more important lessons to be drawn from this. The first and most important: Murray won not by running away from progressive Democratic values -- unlike the Blue Dogs and other Democrats who got wiped out Tuesday night by trying to proffer up Republican Lite agendas -- but by avidly embracing them.

She campaigned with President Obama. Moreover, she sturdily defended her work on the health-care reform and Wall Street reform bills (both of which Rossi wanted to overturn). And she stood behind the fact that she is good at bringing home the bacon for her home state.

Republicans -- particularly Karl Rove and Co. -- poured millions into this race, saturating the airwaves here with nonstop lying ads attacking Murray. The result: A huge wave of angry Seattle voters who turned out en masse on Election Day and voted over 65% for Murray.

(Incidentally, many of these same lessons were to be found in Raul Grijalva's victory, too.)

Meanwhile, over in Idaho -- where Walt Minnick had been ardently courting people who would never in their lives vote for him as long as he had "Democrat" attached to his name, and even going so far as indulge in such blatant Latino-bashing that he got endorsed by white nationalists -- the results were predictable.

The lessons of 2010: If you're building majorities based on electing people who won't even stand behind the party they got elected with, then it's probably not worth having. Progressives need to identify real progressive candidates and get behind them -- and eschew the easy Rahm Emanuel path that eventually leads to disaster.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

If Palin and the Tea Parties are their new kingmakers, GOP may be in for a rough ride

-- by Dave

Well, to read the Wall Street Journal or to watch Fox News, you'd come away from the 2010 Elections with the overwhelming impression that the nation's most powerful kingmakers now were Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties.

The problem with that: Overall, less than half their candidates won. In the case of the Tea Parties, it was only a third or so.

Palin, appearing on Hannity last night, defended some of her higher-profile endorsement losses, which included Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Carly Fiorina, West Virginia's John Raese and her last-minute pitch for third-party candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado.

Her biggest scores were Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Marco Rubio in Florida, John Kasich and Rob Portman in Ohio, Oklahoma's Mary Fallin, New Mexico's Susana Martinez, Texas' Rick Perry and Arizona's Jan Brewer -- nearly all of whom won for reasons well beyond Palin's endorsement. (Of course, the same could be said of her losses.)

MSNBC's First Read compiled the numbers, though by using only general-election results, it omitted two Palin failures in the primaries -- Clint Didier in Washington state and Todd Tiahrt in Kansas. Thus overall for the Senate, Palin made 13 endorsements, and only six of them won. Of her 40 endorsements in House races, only 19 won. She was really only successful in the gubernatorial races, where she made eight endorsements, and seven of them won.

So we can see that, while Palin's endorsement isn't exactly the Kiss of Death, it's certainly the Peck of Mediocrity.

Moreover, as Dave Weigel adroitly observes, Joe Miller's impending loss in Alaska is almost certainly the biggest political embarrassment of the season:

So, then... why would Palin be losing anything on her home turf? She bears exactly zero responsibility for the policies voters don't like. She has not held office for 16 months. She can't pull a candidate she campaigned for over the finish line against a write-in candidate? That's incredible.

Then there are the Tea Parties: As Alexandra Moe at First Read reports, they only elected 32 percent of their candidates:

For all the talk of the Tea Party's strength - and there will certainly be a significant number of their candidates in Congress - just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election. A few races remain too close to call.

In the Senate, 10 candidates backed by the Tea Party ran and at least five were successful. (Race in Alaska has not yet been called.)

In the House, 130 Tea Party-backed candidates ran, and just 40 so far have won.

Some sober conservatives, like Fox News' John Tantillo, at least are having the courage to point out that the new kingmakers have no clothes:

The Tea Party was great in that it mobilized voters and raised important issues about our country’s direction that many of us –myself included— deeply care about.

But it failed in that the party –like all organized political movements—didn’t come close to any kind of sweep of elected office. In other words, there’s simply no mandate for Tea Party concerns and beliefs.

The most comforting aspect of this? Republicans are just about guaranteed not to listen. They have unleashed this populist beast, and it now is carrying them along for the ride. Hope they enjoy it.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Ah, nothing like the right-wing version of 'bipartisanship'

-- by Dave

Just wondering if this is the tone we can expect from those victorious folks on the Right for the next couple of years ... I guess this is what they mean by "no compromise."

Via Thomas Wellborn at Alan Colmes' Liberaland, who observes that this cretin identifies himself as a "Buchananite conservative."

From his website’s masthead:

Political Byline

The writings of an thinking American

Wanna bet this is one of those guys who demands that immigrants learn the English language?
[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Your librul media at work: At Obama's post-election presser, the reporters act like they're from Fox

-- by Dave

Today's press conference was remarkable for a number of things -- President Obama's meekness among them -- but the most disturbing thing was the way reporters grilled him, as though they were Fox talk-show hosts and he just another football of a liberal guest. Their questions, as they always are at Fox, were essentially Republican talking points reshaped as questions.

And it wasn't even the Fox reporters who did it.

First up was the AP's Ben Feller:

Q: Are you willing to concede at all that what happened last night was not just an expression of frustration about the economy, but a fundamental rejection of your agenda?

Sure. Lessee, just two years after fundamentally embracing his agenda -- and rejecting the conservative one -- they've now decided to reject it altogether.

Then, after Obama made clear he didn't buy this nonsense, MSNBC's Savannah Guthrie asked:

Q: Just following up on what Ben just talked about, um -- you don't seem to be reflecting on or second-guessing any of the policy decisions you've made, instead the message the voters were sending was about frustration with the economy, maybe even chalking it up to a failure on your part to communicate effectively. If you're not reflecting on your policy agenda, is it possible voters can conclude, you're still not getting it?

Savannah, we're sure there's a nice deal awaiting you at Fox someday. No one at Fox could have framed that right-wing talking point better. Indeed, we'll bet they wind up playing it a lot there.

It sure is revealing, in a comparison/contrast kinda way, to go back to President Bush's post-election press conference in 2006, after voters had just rebuked Republicans by throwing them out of Congress.

Because no one asked him if his agenda had been repudiated. No one asked if he just didn't get it. All Bush did was say he was going to basically keep doing what he was already doing, and hey, everybody in the press corps was just fine with that.

That's your liberal media at work for ya.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

2010 Campaign Post-Mortem: Yep, it was The Fox Election

-- by Dave

There's going to be a lot of finger-pointing today. I've already given you my two bits' worth. Above all, I think these results tell us that Democrats have once again failed to understand the value of controlling the narrative -- or at least not letting conservatives control the narrative:

I blame the geniuses in the Democratic Party -- both in the White House and elsewhere -- who failed to establish firmly the narrative after the election that needed to be hammered home daily and relentlessly and fearlessly: that Americans had repudiated conservative rule because it had manifestly proven itself a failure. Instead, Democrats thought "bipartisanship" was more important. Sure it was.

This clearly was The Fox Election. This was a political victory entirely engineered by a fake "news network" that in reality is a relentless and powerful right-wing propaganda machine. Democrats need to wake up and figure out how they're going to beat it.

Larray Sabato last night on Fox did point out that there was at least one real upside to all this: The Blue Dogs are now almost entirely extinct. And good riddance, frankly; a more progressive caucus is more likely to be able to establish and elucidate a more progressive agenda.

But amid the carnage, there are some good, positive lessons for Democrats -- especially in Nevada, where Harry Reid pulled out a convincing victory with the help of Democrats' most stalwart friends: labor unions and Latino voters. Remember that pollsters like Rasmussen had Sharron Angle ahead for most of the closing weeks of the election.

What turned the tide? Angle's vicious Latino-bashing attack ads attempting to smear Reid as soft on "illegal aliens."

The results speak for themselves:

Latino vote for Senate
Harry Reid: 90%
Sharron Angle: 8%

Latino share of voters: 12%
Latino contribution to H. Reid: +9.8

That fine Tea Party approach to immigration didn't work out so well:

Reid’s turnout efforts focused strongly on the Hispanic community, a key swing demographic in Nevada elections. Early polling suggested Hispanics wouldn’t turn out because of frustration with the economy and a lack of movement on immigration reform.

A Republican operative even aired an ad explicitly telling Hispanics not to vote.

That, coupled with Angle’s inflammatory ads using images of Hispanic youth dressed as gang members drove some Hispanic voters to the polls.

“That was the final straw,” Gilberto Ramirez, a Reno concrete worker who recently obtained his citizenship and voted for the first time. “She was depicting me as a gang member. I served seven years in the Marine Corps.”

Well, we predicted this. The question now is whether or not Democrats will learn from this: It pays to stand up for something and do the right thing. Being a strong progressive earns voters' respect and ultimately their votes.

I'm not holding my breath.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Palin agrees with O'Reilly that 'you can't be too far right': 'A far right bent would be healthy'

-- by Dave

Sarah Palin, last night on Bill O'Reilly's show, really made plain where she's coming from -- that is, as far right as you can get:

PALIN: At this point in time --

O'REILLY: Yes.

PALIN: With the state of the union, no.

O'REILLY: Yes. You can't be too far right.

PALIN: Any of that far right ideological bent that somebody would have is going to balance out the extreme far left liberal policies that are being adopted this government takeover of our private sector.

O'REILLY: So, you can't -- do you know Paladino who's running for governor here? You know him?

PALIN: I never met him, but I know about him.

O'REILLY: OK. But, he's pretty far right out there.

PALIN: Well, he is running for governor so that's up to the New Yorkers to decide.

(LAUGHTER)

O'REILLY: All right, I know that.

PALIN: But, no. A far right bent would be a healthy -- we need a balance of power here, Bill. Look at this extreme liberalism that has control of the House and the Senate and the White House right now. We have got to balance that out. That's another message that will be sent on Tuesday against failed policy, against the monopoly of power in Congress and in the White House.

Yeah, it's becoming increasingly obvious that no candidate is too far right for Palin. After all, she's relentlessly championed her Patriot pal Joe Miller, even after he hired a bunch of militia thugs who roughed up and handcuffed a reporter.

And in fact she made even more abundantly clear earlier yesterday when Palin endorsed Tom Tancredo for governor of Colorado. We're talking about a guy who recently ditched the GOP for the far-right militia-friendly Constitution Party.

A guy who called Sonia Sotomayor a "racist" and compared the National Council of La Raza to the Klan. A guy who more recently declared that "the greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life, everything we believe in, the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the Founding Fathers, is the guy that is in the White House today."

What's next? An endorsement of that fellow Tea Party apologist, David Duke? After all, according to Palin: You can't be too far right in this political climate.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Just wondering: Has Jon Stewart ever met a real racist?

-- by Dave

Like BlueGal, I was pretty dubious about Jon Stewart's message at the "Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear" from the get-go. It's all about the national discourse, after all, which has seemed to run something like this:

The Right: Socialism! Marxism! Birth certificates! Death panels! Gun control! Tax increases! The left is going to destroy America!

The Left: Jaysus. These people are insane.

Stewart et. al.: Why can't you guys talk to each other?

This reached its apotheosis in Stewart's speech Saturday -- the vast majority of which (especially the media-critique component) I wholeheartedly agreed with. But then there was this:

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rich Sanchez is an insult -- not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.

Now, most of this I agree with. But Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez weren't accused of being bigots, but rather of abetting bigotry with thoughtless and unprofessional remarks.

Even more to the point, some of the people -- myself included -- who are having trouble distinguishing between Tea Partiers and real racists are people who have had extensive dealings over many years with genuine, card-carrying Klansmen, Aryan Nations, skinheads and Patriot/militia radicals.

Or, more precisely -- as the NAACP pointed out in its report of a couple weeks ago -- we are profoundly disturbed by the growing lack of distance between mainstream conservatives and real extremists as a result of the conduit between them that is the Tea Parties.

All of which makes me wonder: Has Jon Stewart ever actually met one of these "real racists" of whom he speaks? Has he ever had a conversation with a neo-Nazi or Klansman? Or for that matter, even a militiaman?

Because if he had -- and especially if, as those of us who are concerned about this have, he'd taken the time to interview or understand these people -- he would know that they don't come with horns and satanic expressions. They don't all have shaven heads and wear leathers and tats. Indeed, the majority of them often seem surprisingly normal. This is one of the cornerstones of their relentless campaign to mainstream themselves.

What the Tea Parties have provided is a powerful means for extremists to do exactly that. And Jon Stewart -- by pretending that the people who are pointing out that this is taking place are somehow poisoning the national discourse -- is unintentionally helping them.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Gen. Jerry Boykin and Gen. Jack Ripper explain the nuances of Marxist infiltration and indoctrination

by Dave

You all remember Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, dontcha? He's the guy who helped bring you Abu Ghraib and is even more famous for his his declarations during the Iraq War that the Christian God was more powerful than Islam's Allah.

Since his retirement, Boykin has been linking arms with a bunch of other theocrats, including Rick Scarborough and Janet Porter. Well, Kyle at RightWingWatch recently caught one of Boykin's recent videos, about the Marxist takeover of America under Obama:

I'm a Special Forces officer, I'm a Green Beret and I've studied Marxist insurgency, it was part of my training. And the things I know have been done in every Marxist insurgency are being done in America today.

Among the signs that we are now on the verge of a complete Marxist takeover?

-- The bailouts, which Boykin says "nationalized" large chunks of the economy.

-- Gun control, which Boykin claims that Obama is pursuing by agreeing to a United Nations small-arms treaty.

-- The hate crimes law, which Boykin claims is about being able to silence pastors and other critics.

And then, of course, the coup d'grace:

The final thing has been to establish a constabulary force, a force that can control the population. You say "well, we don't have that." Well, let me remind you that prior to the election, the President stood up and said that if elected he would have a nation civilian security force that would be as large as and as well-equipped as the United States military.

For what?

Remember Hitler had the Brownshirts and in the Night of the Long Knives, even Hitler got scared of the Brownshirts and killed thousands of them.

So you say "are there any signs that that's happened" and the truth is yes. If you read the health care legislation which, by the way nobody in Washington has read, but if you read the health care legislation it's actually in the health care legislation.

There are paragraphs in the health care legislation that talk about the commissioning of officers in time of a national crisis to work directly for the President. It's laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America.

Of course, one couldn't listen to this rant without being instantly reminded of General Jack D. Ripper. I obtained some documentary footage of Gen. Ripper and mashed it up with the Boykin video so you could do a comparison/contrast.

As Kyle notes:

Let me also just point out that Senate Republicans actually had Boykin on their witness list to testify against Elena Kagan at her confirmation hearing until they dropped him at the last moment.

Gee, I can't imagine why.

Let me also point out that Boykin is not only one of the brilliant geniuses behind Abu Ghraib, he also played a major role in the horrendous disaster at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993.

What is not known about Waco is that the final assault plan was amended on the ground by the tactical field commanders on the very day of the assault. That alteration had been discussed and rejected by the FBI brass over several weeks. Nonetheless, the FBI HRT commander, Richard Rogers implemented the rejected plan via a loophole signed by Janet Reno the morning of the final assault on April 19. That alteration was identical to the gassing and demolition plan that two Delta Force advisors seconded to the Justice Dept. in a principals meeting of April 14. Those two advisors supported the rejected plan that was later implemented "hypothetically" in order to conform to the letter of Posse Comitatus law. I also have published a peer-reviewed article with this finding. It is based on government documents--all open source. The rejected plan supported by Jeff Jamar, Richard Rogers, and the two Delta Force officers resulted in a disaster that did not have to happen. It was an ill-advised tactical approach to a religious community that feared that Satan was attacking them.

Those two Delta Force officers were Peter J. Schoomaker and "Jerry" Boykin, now both top officials in the US Army in charge of military planning for the war on terrorism.

I suspect that if Sarah Palin ever wins the presidency, Boykin is going to be named her Secretary of Defense. Then the comparisons to General Ripper will become even more salient.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Right-wing violence, threats are on the rise -- and getting a wink and a nudge

-- by Dave

This week's head-stomping of a liberal protester by a Rand Paul campaign official in Kentucky, as we noted at the time, really brought into sharp focus a gathering trend toward violence, threats and intimidation by right-wing activists toward their opponents that we've seen reach new depths these past few weeks:

-- Mentally unstable nutcases threatening liberal campaigners in Washington state, Illinois and Vermont.

-- A swastika-laden white-powder-terrorism attack on a Democratic congressman's offices.

-- Thugs hired by the Republican candidate in Alaska roughing up and handcuffing a reporter for asking questions at a public event.

-- Violent gunmen targeting liberal organizations after being inspired by right-wing talk-show hosts.

-- Republican congressional candidates who insist that a violent overthrow of the government is "on the table" if the 2010 Election fails to produce the desired right-wing takeover of Congress.

But of course, these are all "isolated incidents" that have nothing to do with each other, right?

Adam H. Shah at Media Matters compiled an even more exhaustive list from the past couple of years (though even it omits some incidents). Likewise, here's a helpful-if-not-100%-complete Google map of right-wing violent incidents of the past six months.

Amanda Terkel has noticed, too:

"It's been quite amazing over the last couple months, but really over the last two years," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and extremism. "I'd date this, in many ways, to the rise to power of Obama. Many people we saw coming with AR-15s to town halls and so on, and all of that. But I do think that it's gotten even hotter out there. I think the reaction to the stomping of that woman's head has been quite amazing. The idea that the guy could say that he needed an apology and that he's not being condemned by the political class from sea to shining sea is astounding."

While there has been an increased number of highly publicized incidents in recent weeks, there was also a spike in violence or threatened violence during the health care debate toward lawmakers who supported the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. People vandalized congressional offices and threatened to assassinate officials and their families. Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) had a picture of a noose faxed to his office after he voted for health care reform. A former militia member named Mike Vanderboegh even proudly took credit for encouraging people around the country to break the windows of lawmakers' offices.

There has also been a significant amount of violence-tinged rhetoric coming from politicians. Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle floated "Second Amendment remedies" as a "cure" for an out-of-control Congress. Last week, a Republican House candidate in Texas said a violent overthrow of the government is "on the table." Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has taken some flack for using gun imagery after the passage of health care reform, telling her supporters to "reload."

What's particularly worrisome about this trend is the way mainstream politicos and media pundits -- all of the right-wing variety -- have simply shrugged, winked, and nudged at this behavior, as if it were to be expected. Rand Paul's lame response was only the tip of the iceberg -- or did anyone else notice that Fox scarcely even covered any of these events? Even more appalling is the way this kind of behavior is actually being encouraged by the violent and inflammatory rhetoric that has become part and parcel of American conservatism.

The embodiment of this, of course, is Byron Williams' Glenn-Beck-inspired planned armed assault on the Tides Foundation. As Williams put it:

"You know, I'll tell you," he says, "Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He's protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, I understand what he's doing."

We had a similar Glenn Beck disciple problem here in Washington state:

According to publicly available documents filed in federal court, a cousin of Charles Wilson -- a Washington man sentenced to prison last week for repeatedly threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) after she voted in favor of health care reform legislation -- said Wilson's "fears were grown and fostered by [Glenn] Beck's persuasive personality."

Wilson's cousin's comments were made in a letter -- one of 25 submitted by Wilson's public defender in which Wilson's friends and family attested to his character. In a sentencing memo, Wilson's attorney requested leniency, noting "[t]he period of time in which he committed the offense conduct is totally aberrant when one looks at how Mr. Wilson has lived the rest of his life."

Wilson's cousin, who is related to him through marriage, wrote in a September 17 letter:

What happened later with Charlie is something I think I can understand. He became basically housebound due to illness and his small world became even smaller. His brother got him a computer and he was able to stay connected with family. And he watched television and found Glenn Beck... I found Glenn Beck about the same time Charlie did. I understand how his fears were grown and fostered by Mr. Beck's persuasive personality. The same thing happened to me but I went in a different direction with what I was seeing. Rather than blame politicians for the current issues, I simply got prepared for what Glenn said was coming. I slowly filled our pantry as Glenn fed fear into me. I did not miss watching his show and could not understand why the rest of the world didn't get it -- Glenn became a pariah to me. But I was finally able to step away and realize the error of my ways. The media lost its grip on me. But it still held very tightly to Charlie.

While his actions were undeniably wrong and his choices were terrible, in part they were the actions of others played out by a very gullible Charlie. He was under the spell that Glenn Beck cast, aided by the turbulent times in our economy. I don't believe that Charlie even had the ability to actually carry out his threats.

George Zornick at ThinkProgress has more on this case. (We wrote about it way back when.)

You do begin to wonder when our liberal (ahem!) mainstream media will actually bother to notice. Today, I see they're busy worrying about UPS packages. Tomorrow it will be another Muslim thing, no doubt. Meanwhile ...

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Sharron Angle calls out her conspiracist army to combat the coming wave of Latino voters

-- by Dave

Warning, voters! According to Sharron Angle, Harry Reid is plotting to steal the Nevada election!:

Harry Reid intends to steal this election if he can't win it outright. As a result, we need to deploy literally dozens of election law attorneys and poll watchers to combat these tactics at a cost of nearly $80,000. That's over and above our current budget. We need to raise $80,000 and we need to do it RIGHT NOW, because even as I am writing this, Harry Reid and his Machine are trying to steal this election. I'm sorry that we have to come to you yet again and ask for you to reach deep and contribute, but we must.

Understand, EVERYTHING we have worked for in the last year could be destroyed by dirty tricks and criminal acts in the next 8 days. As Sharron's first line of defense on these matters I am absolutely committed to making sure this won't happen.

Of course, the Secretary of State subsequently issued a statement noting that that the Angle campaign "fails to cite any evidence of 'vote buying' in the State of Nevada other than reports to their election hotline about representatives of unions." It added, somewhat pointedly:

The statutes involved in this matter carry criminal penalties, and complaints should contain specific information, not conjecture and rumor used in support of a plea for financial contributions, as the foundation of the violation.

In other words: These are serious allegations. If you're going to make them, you need to at least have a smidgen of evidence other than your paranoias.

And these folks -- boy, are they paranoid. Indeed, one would have to call them "conspiracist loons". Consider the organization that Angle is now using to spread the word for volunteers to take part in Nevada "poll-watching":

In 2008, Angle's We the People Nevada PAC contributed $92,000 to the Nevada Action Coalition. The Coalition emerged this month as a player in alleging ballot hijinks by Democrats.

Coalition members recently advertised a "voter fraud" meeting and accused Reid of wanting to rig the race.

"Want to make sure Harry and his buddies don't steal this election?" an Oct. 9 web post read. "Then come to the training next Tuesday. We need lots of watchers, cause you know the dark side has secret plans for this election."

"Want to make sure Harry and his buddies don't steal this election?" an Oct. 9 web post read. "Then come to the training next Tuesday. We need lots of watchers, cause you know the dark side has secret plans for this election."

Last week, the group posted a second warning to members:

"I recieved (sic) a call...about a 'funny' voter machine at Tropicana & Hualapi. Seems when she voted for a Republican candidate the machine 'helped' by changing her vote to a Democrat candidate.

Moral of this Story...Report ANY voter irregularity to the Poll Watcher Hot Line. We need to report all suspicious activity as you know Harry's men are out to steal this election."

Well, just who is the Nevada Action Coalition? Funny you should ask:

NAC bills itself as "a group of ordinary American citizens who work to expose and stop the corrupt political elites that are giving away or selling our sovereignty for their own gains." They endorsed Angle and Republicans down the ballot.

The Coalition claims that the government wants to merge the United States with "the corruption, socialism, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada" and designate a section of Kansas City as sovereign Mexican territory, according to its website. It also asserts that Muslim leaders designated a yellow badge for Jews to wear, which was later copied by Hitler in Nazi Germany.

Indeed, you can read the NAC's page devoted to the North American Union conspiracy theory here. The NAC also promotes the utterly specious (and fundamentally racist) "Aztlan invasion" conspiracy theory, as you can see here.

The Nevada race is taking on an especially ugly facet: Angle is clearly doubling down on her openly bigoted anti-Latino campaign appeal, as evidenced by her latest campaign ploy: a fake 'Monopoly' game that bashes Latinos.

She really is an extremist who is happy to empower her fellow extremists. Moreover, this is almost guaranteed to make the scene at Nevada polling stations on Tuesday extremely ugly. Hopefully, election officials -- and especially Latino voters and their Democratic defenders -- will be properly prepared to deal with the ugliness.

Part of Angle's paranoia and desperation, no doubt, is fueled by her certain knowledge that the openly bigoted nature of her Latino-bashing will wind up backfiring and doubly energizing the state's Latino voters -- who in 2008 constituted 12 percent of the state's voters. As Reuters noted awhile back, those Latino voters almost certainly hold the election's outcome in their hands.

Of course, they're not showing up in the Nevada polls much, because all of those polls are land-line phone polls -- a technique that notably reduces the participation of Latinos and other minorities, who increasingly rely solely on cell phones, and thus undercounts them. Indeed, it seems likely that Latinos and Asians are being seriously undercounted in this year's polls generally.

Polls may show Angle leading now, but they are seriously flawed polls that do not take into account a likely Latino wave of support for Harry Reid. Which means that on the morning after Election Day, Republicans and Sharron Angle may well be sitting there wondering what went wrong -- and looking for Democrats to blame.

That, of course, is what this current game is really all about: It's setting up the excuse -- and the scapegoat -- ahead of time. Watch for cries of "Fraud!" to abound on Fox News next Wednesday -- especially if their planned takeover falls short.

[Jon Ralston knocked the "fraud" story down this morning.]

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Maybe we should just call this 'The Fox Election'

-- by Dave

Everyone keeps saying the coming election is a referendum on President Obama. I beg to differ. I'm beginning to believe that it's actually a referendum on Fox News.

Because, well, let's be honest: The Republican Party would be dead in the water right now were it not for Fox and its ceaseless efforts -- primarily through lying and propagandizing 24/7/365 -- at reviving the conservative movement brand.

Voters aren't voting for Republicans or a GOP agenda. They're voting for the Fox agenda.

I was thinking about this while watching our fearless fearmonger in chief Glenn Beck waxing apocalyptic yesterday on his Fox show -- which, as Media Matters points out, Beck is using as his own Get Out The Vote operation. Beck's show was full of warnings about the dire threat posed to the Republic by progressives, and how this election will reverse that course and refudiate progressivism.

But the best part was the little promo that ran near the end of the show, with the following script:

Narrator: On November 2, 2010, you have a choice. You can stand up for freedom and liberty. Or sit back and let the American Dream become a nightmare.

It's way too late for politics. Instead, vote as if your way of life depends on it. Because it does.

Vote for government by the people, of the people, and for the people. Vote Democrat, Republican, or Independent. But whatever you do, vote for Honor. Restoration. The Constitution. Vote for America.

This is just about the endpoint of the campaign that Fox has been waging for the past two years -- beginning the day after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. Think about it:

-- The engine of their comeback, the Tea Parties, is almost wholly a Fox concoction. Without Fox's endless promotions of the various Tea Party events -- and Tea Party figures, including its corporate overseers like Dick Armey -- the "movement" would have been nothing, a brief blip on the screen.

-- Congressional Republicans managed to maintain their discipline in uniformly voting "No" on every Obama proposal that came down the pike because Fox was there as a threat to anyone who strayed. And Fox's ceaseless propaganda against every Obama proposal certainly gave PR sustenance to anyone who stayed within the fold.

-- Every Republican candidate on the planet -- with the exception of the truly execrable Dan Maes in Colorado -- has gotten lots of free airtime on Fox to promote their campaign. Their opponents -- not at all. And what's been interesting is how these candidates have been able to use Fox to get airtime while refusing to speak to their local reporters at all.

-- The entire narrative of this coming election has been dictated by Fox. Is it any wonder that the conventional wisdom now perfectly reflects what Fox has been dictating?

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not quite there yet. I'm especially not ready to hand over governance of the country to a propaganda news network.

But it's obvious that we don't really have a Republican Party anymore. It's now a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox News. And that's who this election is really about.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

WTF? At Fox & Friends, Obama accused of 'injecting' race into debate with oft-told car story

-- by Dave

You have got to be kidding me:

Peter Johnson: You know, it's a peculiar and strange and haunting and really backward reference that we're seeing by the president. And what we're really seeing is a reference to the notion of being in the back of the bus. And that's a matter of sad American history, embarrassing American history. Rosa Parks in December 1955 changed the course of American history when she decided that she would not give up her seat for a white person. And ended the concept, across the country, of African Americans being in the back of the bus -- literally, metaphorically, in every way in terms of our society.

So now we have a president referring to this kind of malignant, charged era in American history, and saying, in a long narrative -- and it's incredible what he said -- that somehow the car's in the ditch, that the Republicans are --

Brian Kilmeade: He's told the story a million times.

Johnson: No, no, but it's incredible -- at the top of the ditch, slipping, ah, drinking slurpees, kicking dirt in the face of the president and others who are trying to get this car out of the ditch. And once the car's out of the ditch and the Republicans demand the keys -- 'You can't have the keys, but we'll let you sit in the back of the bus.'

Couple that too with the statement the president made on a Spanish radio show, where he talks about exhorting the Spanish-American community, the Latino community in this country to punish their enemies when they vote.

Kilmeade: And reward your friends.

Johnson: When we engage in this charged, strange, malignant kind of language, we are not moving forward. We are moving backwards, um, in this country. And it's a regrettable statement.

The American bus -- the American car is a bus and a car for all Americans, regardless of race, and regardless of party. And so we're allegedly in this post-partisan, post-racial era where we summon our better angels. To summon our worst demons and to go back 55 years and summon a horrible image of a courageous Rosa Parks fighting the evil of segregation -- to inject that again into our politics is a mistake. It's a surprising thing and I'm sure the president wouldn't do it again.

Soooooo. I guess RedStaters aren't the only wingnuts this desperate in their neverending search for proof, which they know fershure is out there, that President Obama and the liberals are the real racists in this mix.

Now Fox & Friends are in on the action. Can Glenn Beck be far behind?

But let's replay the tape, just so everyone can see what Obama actually says. The tellings vary slightly, of course, from venue to venue, but here's how he put it last week in Seattle:



Transcript:

Obama: Let me offer an analogy I've been using around the country. The Republicans took America's car and drove it into the ditch. And it was a really deep ditch. And it was really reckless driving. So afterwards we show up at the scene of the accident. The Republicans have climbed out of the car. Abandoned the accident. Patty and I, we're putting on our boots and we're going down and into the ditch. And it's muddy down there, and it's hot and it's dusty. But you know what, we know that we've got to get the car out, and so we just start pushing.

And Patty, even though she's small, she's tough, so she's -- [demonstrates pushing]. And even though I'm skinny, I'm pretty tough, so I'm pushing. And sometimes we slip a little bit. Sometimes it's not working -- but we're just staying on it, we're sweating it -- every once in awhile I look up, and the Republicans are up there on the road. They're just waving. And meanwhile they're going around whispering to everybody, 'They're not pushing hard enough.' 'They're not pushing the right way.' And we say to them, 'Well, why don't come down here and help push?' 'Naw, naw, naw.' 'Push harder, push harder.'

So we just get out and push. And finally -- finally! -- we get this car up on the road. The car is a little banged up. The car is a little banged up, it's gotta go to the body shop and get a tuneup -- but you know what? It's pointed in the right direction. It's starting to move.

And suddenly we get this tap on our shoulders. And we look -- who is it? It's the Republicans! And they're saying: 'Ah, we want the keys back.'

You can't have the keys back! You don't know how to drive!

The Republicans can come along with us, but they've got to get in the back seat -- where they can't do too much damage.

Have you ever noticed that when you want the car to go forward, you put it in 'D'. When you want it to go backward, you put it in 'R'.

OK, anyone there see a reference to "the back of the bus"? Or Rosa Parks? Or segregation?

Uh, no. Because it isn't there. Obama's metaphor doesn't even obliquely hint at these issues.

Indeed, you have to wonder if Johnson's hyper-sensitivity to any discussion of race has to do with the fact that it was Southern conservatives who wanted Rosa Parks to sit in the back of the bus.

Memo to Peter Johnson: A bus is not a car. Political affiliation is not race. The fact that you deliberately confuse the two -- using them, in fact, interchangeably -- tells us far more about you and Brian Kilmeade than it does anything about President Obama.

After all, the only way this little anecdote can even remotely be about race is if you equate the Republican Party with white people. And that, of course, is simply not true -- at least not according to Republicans. So who's being the racist here?

[Crossposted at Crooks and Liars.]

Rand Paul's lame response: Won't condemn or disavow assault by supporter, calls it 'unusual situation' UPDATED

-- by Dave

UPDATE II: The stomper has been identified as Rand Paul's Bourbon County coordinator, Tim Profitt. More details upcoming.

In the past, whenever violence has broken out at American political events, it has become standard practice for the politicians whose campaigns inspire the acts -- on both sides -- to disavow the people involved and swiftly condemn their actions, making clear that this kind of behavior is deeply antidemocratic and unAmerican.

So Rand Paul went on Fox News' America's Newsroom this morning with the opportunity to do just that in response to last night's horrifying assault on a MoveOn protester, and here's the best he could come up with:

Paul: Well, we want everybody to be civil. We want this issue -- the campaign to be about issues. I will tell you that when we arrived, there was enormous passion on both sides. It really was something where you walk into a daze of lights flashing, people yelling and screaming, bumping up. And there was a bit of a crowd control problem. And I -- I don't want anybody to be involved, though, in things that aren't civil. I think this should always be about the issues, and is an unusual situation to have so many people so passionate on both sides, jockeying back and forth.

And it wasn't something that I liked or anybody liked about that situation. So I hope in the future it's going to be better.

Hello? Notice anything missing there?

How about the words "condemn violence"? How about pointing out that this kind of behavior has no place in any campaign on either side? Maybe just a smidge of concern for the health and well-being of the victim of the violence?

Nope. Because, obviously, that didn't occur to Rand Paul. Evidently, the supporter's behavior wasn't condemnation-worthy.

As Steve Benen observes:

Here's a hypothetical: if large, male union members had grabbed a young woman who worked with Tea Partiers, dragged her to the ground, and literally stepped on her head, would Rand Paul be on Fox News saying "it wasn't something that I liked," or might his response be a little stronger?

Indeed, at certain quadrants of the wingnutosphere, they're busy defending, even celebrating the violence.

Contrary to initial reports that Lauren Valle, the woman being assaulted, sustained no injuries, our sources at MoveOn tell us that Valle indeed was diagnosed with a concussion and is being hospitalized for treatment.

One of the two men involved in the assault has been identified as an open-carry advocate named Mike Pezzano:



Police are now seeking Pezzano and his cohort.

So I wonder when our liberal media are going to notice that we have a trend going here, eh?

-- Mentally unstable nutcases threatening liberal campaigners in Washington state, Illinois and Vermont.

-- A swastika-laden white-powder-terrorism attack on a Democratic congressman's offices.

-- Thugs hired by the Republican candidate in Alaska roughing up and handcuffing a reporter for asking questions at a public event.

-- Violent gunmen targeting liberal organizations after being inspired by right-wing talk-show hosts.

-- Republican congressional candidates who insist that a violent overthrow of the government is "on the table" if the 2010 Election fails to produce the desired right-wing takeover of Congress.

But of course, these are all "isolated incidents" that have nothing to do with each other, right?

Alex Seitz-Wald at ThinkProgress has more.

UPDATE: MoveOn's Justin Ruben has issued a statement:

We're appalled at the violent incident that occurred at the Kentucky Senate debate last night. Numerous news reports clearly show that the young woman--a MoveOn supporter--was assaulted and pushed to the ground by Rand Paul supporters, where one man held her down while another stomped on her head. This kind of violence has no place in American society, much less at a peaceful political rally.


Our first concern is obviously Lauren's health and well being. She is recovering, and we will release more details as we have them. We are concerned that no arrests have yet been made, and we hope those responsible will be brought to justice quickly, and that Rand Paul will join us in condemning this horrible act.

You see, it's really quite simple. When you have a bone of decency in your body.

UPDATE III: The Paul campaign issued this statement:

We understand that there was an altercation outside of the debate between supporters of both sides and that is incredibly unfortunate. Violence of any kind has no place in our civil discourse and we urge supporters on all sides to be civil to one another as tensions rise heading toward this very important election.

Funny that Rand himself couldn't say these words, isn't it?

And we'll see if they back up the words with action -- such as firing the campaign official who stomped on the woman's head.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

RedStaters seem to be looking for ANY excuse to use racial slurs

-- by Dave

[media id="18567" embed="true" image="true" download="true"]

We all know that the wingnutosphere, particularly Andrew Breitbart, has been searching for evidence of liberal racism and anti-white bigotry on the part of President Obama and various liberal organizations for some time now. So far, the best they've come up with is Shirley Sherrod.

So here's how desperate they've become:

And Even STILL I Am Not Allowed To Make A Racial Slur About Our President? After THIS? AYFKM!?!?!?

I almost don’t have words…almost:

He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

In the new post-racial America, brought to us by Barack “don’t call me black or white, just call me American” Obama, we have been told our differences are behind us now…just because he exists and… just because he is black. Yet, day by day and speech by speech, this President has done more damage to race relations than any combination of Presidents since Lyndon Johnson…and he, at least, tried to make things better with a sincere heart.

Were anyone else to have been caught on tape making these sorts of remarks, they’d have already been fired and given a 2 million dollar job contract with the competition. Oh wait.

The lack of outrage should surprise no one here. We were told to vote for him… not because he was black but… because he brought with him hope and change and the promise of a color blind society. He has delivered on none of these, instead making race relations worse today than they were before he was elected.

Excuse me, but ... WTF? Is this the first time this clown has heard Obama telling this story? Hell, he said nearly the exact same thing last week in Seattle, which is where we got the above video. And as we pointed out then, Obama has been telling this routine since at least May 14.

Suddenly now he has his noise out of joint? And over ... what, exactly? Somehow, the innate racism of Obama's remark eludes me. Is there some deeper racial connotation to sitting in the back seat we don't know about?

Besides, it's pretty clear that he's saying that Republicans have to sit in the back seat, isn't it? Or is Poff implying that the Republican Party equals white people? So just exactly who's being racist here?

BTW, I especially like Obama's closing bit here:

Obama: Have you ever noticed that when you want the car to go forward, you put it in 'D'. When you want it to go backward, you put it in 'R'.

Maybe that's racist too. We're sure Poff can explain to us how that is -- and how it now gives him permission to use racial slurs.

Indeed, given his headline, he sure seems as though he's just been bursting with withheld racial slurs against Obama. Dude, by all means, let it out. Better we know what you really think.

Though most of us can pretty much figure that out anyway.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]