Musings on 2012 and other things

A Tsunami, a Chernobyl event, the Saudis invading everyone, two wars, Gaddafhi killing his people, and what do the Republicans in the House called an emergency meeting on? Jobs--we haven't seen one bill yet offered by the Republicans which would create a single job. Pick a think tank or the Fed, the Republican budget will cost either a low of 200,000 jobs or a high of about 800,000. The urgent matter of the day where all Republicans had to meet in an emergency was--funding for NPR and PBS. You have to be kidding me. You have to figure out how to kill Elmo when nuclear reactors are melting and Japan is devastated. And people are to trust you with what--again?

All Washington is abuzz about the budget deal and that the real problem will emerge at the end of April. Quite frankly, I think I could stand to see the government shut down so that people would wake up to the insanity of the Republicans. I would be sorry for the furloughed government employees and all the seniors who didn't receive social security checks but until visible pain is seen then people will not wise up to this travesty.

But I digress. The Washington Post reports that Sarah Palin's approval ratings among Republicans have plunged beneath those for Romney, Gingrich and Huckabee. This is part of the media campaign against Palin. Pundits are coming out of the wordwork to claim she's not electable. Most of this is coming from the Republican side, which uses these polls to make their point. But 58% approval among Republicans and the other guys haven't been seen as much? C'mon. The fear is that she has strong support among the tea party people who terrify the establishment. They were good for midterms but now they are seen as extreme and divisive. Even old Swizzle Stick Boehner doesn't know how to handle the teabaggers, who urgently want a government shut down.

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire kicked the Republican assault off with his analysis that Palin would not win any primaries but would always win seconds and thirds and then the Convention would become a nightmare because her delegates would be the most motivated and demanding of the party leaders. Then you had the juicy leak that Roger Ailes advised Palin not to release the "blood libel' video after the shooting of Gaby Giffords. Then Ailes let on that he had to make a decision soon on cutting Huckabee and Palin from Fox if they decided to run for President.

Then the fun began with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Peter Wehner all saying that she was not competent but was more like the Republicans Al Sharpton. Then the Daily Beast let the cat out of the bag about how Palin got the Vice Presidential nomination--McCain wanted a woman put on the list, simply to attract Hillary voters. Then Meghan McCain put her two cents in about Palin. Talk about a pile on and she didn't do or say anything to provoke this, which is unique for her.

The only one who has come to Palin's defense is Rush Limbaugh, who went after all the would-be intellectuals, saying they weren't real conservatives and that people made fun of Reagan before he ran for President. The Free Republic crowd also mentioned that Charles Krauthammer once worked for Fritx Mondale--don't know--and he's not the one who should tell people about conservatism.

The rich quote was from Peter Wehner, who mentioned Pat Moynihan as saying "The GOP had become the party of ideas" and "we are proud of that." But the conservative so-called intellectuals haven't looked at themselves in the mirror lately. The last time the GOP had a new idea it was Billy Kristol's "Big Government Conservatism" at the beginning of the George W. Bush administration. That turned out splendid. The country is still paying dearly for that whopper. If you consult the various conservative think-tanks, there is literally nothing new. And that's obvious from the antics of the House Republicans.

But these pundits often have a disproportionate influence on the early part of a campaign so it's important to watch them.

Sarah Palin recently has been quoted as taking potshots at the old, white male establishment with particular focus on Newton Leroy Gingrich. I hate to say this but I thought her remarks were spot on and happen to agree with Rush on the criticism of Palin. What conservatives will not recognize is that the two most important conservatives now in their intellectual bankruptcy are Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Mark Levin also chimed in to support Palin But he is a minor figure.

Palin does represent every value of the base of today's Republican value without any contradiction. Horrifying but true. If she runs, she will drive the elderly white men crazy. And yes, don't quote this back at me in months,there is plenty of sexism from the boys in the back aimed at Palin.

And speaking of which, enter Newt Gingrich. His media staff are having a shakedown period as they chided critics about their statement about how many people get Newt's tweets. This is truly the argument of the absurd and it shows their caliber. How does newt compare to Lindsey Lohan?

Meanwhile,Newt has been embracing the evangelicals big time,appearing on all the Christian Right television and radio stations. Unlike John McCain, he has embraced Rev. Hagee, who was dumped last campaign because of his violently anti-Catholic beliefs. Hagee was vital for George W's GOTV campaign in Ohio. It also turns out that Newt provided significant funding to the evangelicals in their successful campaign to defeat the Iowa Supreme Court judges who ruled for same-sex marriage. He is touching all the bases in the social conservative world.

Polling of Republicans and teabaggers show that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have big trouble with their Mormonism, especially among the teabag set. Romney also has to face the 67% opposition to " someone who advocates health insurance mandates". Only 21 percent said they could vote for someone like that. Huntsman was perceived as a "socialist" when he wasn't a "communist".

Meanwhile Frothy Mix Santorum has been running gung-ho on the Christian Right platform. His latest opinion was that JFK was radical in his insistence of a separation of church and state. You'll recall JFK was trying to assure the American voter that it was safe to vote for a Catholic. At the time, the attitude was 'register Catholics, not guns." Newt also now shares the view that there is really no seperation of church and states. So the Theocrat vote is up for grabs.

Tim Pawlenty has been hustling around Iowa and other early primary states to raise his profile among Republican voters. I never realized until recently that he too is an evangelical Christian and a fiscal conservative.

But the Love Revolution is creeping up on all of them. It looks like Ron Paul will run again for President. His money machine has started up again and last month he put $1 million in the bank and last year he brought in $24 million, making him one of the top money earners in the party. He seems to have his campaign elbows out. He took a nice preemptory dig at Donald Trump by mentioning that Trump may have violated campiagn laws because his plane is registered in Bermuda. Ouch! When Paul starts into his campaign mode, he begins to get biting.

The big mystery now is about the primary schedule itself because so many states have budget problems and may either cancel or postpone. We're less than a year away. This is really going to be awful.

Tea-Bagging--Salad Tossing Next?

Fox News proudly sponsored a nation-wide series of events that had the unfortunate name of tea-bagging, which drew slightly over 260,000 people on a workday. Groups of white Americans took to the streets to protest a bewildering array of things from the TARP program begun under Bush, to corporate bailouts started under Bush and to the AIG bailout started under Bush, to socialism, the stimulus package and the alleged or projected laws against guns to be enacted in some distant future by President Obama. It was clear from the signage that the events were almost exclusively aimed at President Obama, who passed the largest middle-class tax cut in history. Depending on the region, the racist tone of the rallies varied but was underneath in all of them.

Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, who have been the mentors to the current Republican House Leadership, put their organization at the tea parties disposal with the view, in Newt's words, of running a trial balloon for the future. Impressed by President Obama's use of facebook, youtube and the internet, Republicans have been fantasizing about how to create such a counter-movement. In select areas, where the corporate money financed tea parties, I believe some of the events were in fact trial runs for future electoral contests.

For the most part, these events had a heavy dose of third party participants such as the libertarians, who claimed to have invented the idea, the Constitution Party and the American Independence Party. Some of the more vocal organizers claimed they were trying to create an organization like MoveOn.org or a Code Pink of the right. At the D.C. rally, one participant flew in from Oregon to"be in the belly of the beast" and meet celebrities like...drumroll--Alan Keyes.

But he shouldn't be mocked. There is a strange logic to the tea-bagging, which critics on the left ignore. You either know Alan Keyes for his insane pursuit of the Obama birth certificate issue or from Borat. The pictures of the events yesterday with women with hats covered with teabags and men dressed like colonial soldiers and signs portraying Obama as Hitler were in fact out of Borat. And I believe there is a reason for this.

If you have had a difficult time understanding why Glenn Beck is acting like he is, it's best to change the frame from which you view him. While the unintended consequences of his incendiary rhetroic recently has led to the killing of three policemen in Pittsburgh,he is nothing other than an instrument of the Fox Channel to cope in the Obama age when Fox no longer has access to the White House and no longer receives stories to plant.

Roger Ailes is a communications genius and Rupert Murdoch is as cold a cynic one can find. The name of the game is still money. The tea parties are a perfect example, not of astroturfing as the left is claiming about a top down movement, but rather television programming. Murdoch could care less if his minions incite armed violence. Clearly, having Sean Hannity post a poll about how do you want to overthrow the government is meant to suck the audience into the Fox orbit. The winning option was armed struggle, something I wish on no one either as the combatant or victim.

The events themselves are meant to be laughed at--they are entertainment and based on the principle of game shows or the old Jerry Springer Show that Americans love to embarrass themselves and be made fun of. The size of the tea parties suggest that precise thing--this was in fact Fox using their base audience as guinea pigs and turning the country into the Gong Show. The lack of irony in all this was intentional in the Murdoch world--the deliberate use of jargon for a gay sexual practice, the hosting of an event at the Alamo where Americans were slaughtered, and the list goes on. Conservatives need to feel victimized and embattled. What better way to create group cohesion and to ensure a loyal audience than to have them subject to ridicule? Even Michael Steele of the RNC fell for the bait--claiming "We outdid the MSNBCs of the world". In fact, all of us were to laugh at the participants so the "liberal" media could be criticized for its arrogant views of the average citizen. What better way to ensure group bonding.

The psychology of this from a marketing view is rather sound but its utility for political activism very negligible. Fox News triumphed with tea parties, filling hours of program time with little overhead and building their base audience. But in fact conservatives or Republicans wounded their own cause by appearing in the Murdoch production of Borat.

Consider how Machivellian this all is--the next event for the tea-baggers is July 4th, a date rarely, ever used for political demonstrations because people are out on a holiday and look at fireworks. But Fox is sadistic enough to get its audience to appear for the day on television exhibiting lunatic behavior.

For the Newt Ginrgich and Dick Armey's of the world, there has to be a reality check. According to recent, reliable polling, the Republican Party stands at historic low levels of 25% identification. The Democrats are 40% and Independents are at 35%. Republicans have lost the following constituencies: the youth (which Reagan once won 60% of ); Hispanics; Blacks; and professionals or the suburban vote. The Republican party has no representation in Congress from New England, a dwindling amount from the Mid-Atlantic states, and is rapidly becoming a Southern party.

A recent Gallup poll has for the first time in my lifetime recorded that basically Americans feel the tax code is fair. With Obama's tax-cuts going into effect, this might rise, depending on whether Fox spin is neutralized. So why will another platform of tax cuts be successful?

In another entry, I'll explore whether there is not another agenda to the recent Republican obstructionism. But in the meantime, Fox enjoys its ratings with the Reality Show: Americans Go Bonkers.