The GOP’s nightmare scenario is now: cascading stupidity effect under way

Just a little something to back up my earlier post arguing that attempts to spin away the GOP’s War on Women only serve to prove it’s real.

Right Wing Watch: On Friday, Allen West spoke with Steve Malzberg where he defended Mike Huckabee’s recent comment by declaring that “the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down” while Republicans seek to reach the hearts and minds of female voters.

Asserting that Democrats want the government to be “the sugar daddy” and replace men, West said Democrats have been “caught guilty as always” and are responding by attacking Huckabee. He then went on to claim that the Left remains utterly silent when women like Malala Yousafzai are abused and attacked by the Taliban before declaring that “I’m going to be very blunt: the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down.”

See, because women aren’t really concerned about all that contraception and reproductive health stuff — or if they do are then they’re wrong. Only Republican men like Allen West and Mike Huckabee know what’s important to women, so listen up and learn, ladies.

But this is also the beginning of the nightmare scenario, where one moron says one very stupid thing and other morons rush to defend him because that’s what they think you do when conservatives get criticized. This is what the GOP has been trying very, very hard to avoid and most likely won’t be able to. You can’t spend years encouraging this sort of thing and expect to be able to shut it off when it turns out to be bad politics. These people are going to engage in insane and clueless sexism because that’s modern conservatism. It’s what Limbaugh does every day, it’s what rightwing blogs do every day, so it’s absolutely normal and not at all crazy to these guys. They’re going to keep doing it because they just don’t know any better.

And West is probably more popular in the base than Huckabee — meaning that even more people will likely come forward to defend him. Then others will come out to defend them. And cetera and cetera and cetera, until the unofficial Republican position will be that women who care about reproductive health and freedom are just loose, slutty morons being preyed upon by Democrats.

That’s exactly the wrong way to convince people you’re not waging a sexist War on Women. But it’s exactly what the base believes.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Cruz insists everything’s fine, as his party crashes down around his ears

Raw Story: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday asserted that his crusade to kill President Barack Obama’s health care law by shutting down the U.S. government had not damaged the Republican Party in any way.

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Cruz if he had hurt the GOP brand.

“Not remotely,” Cruz laughed. “But I also think far too many people are worried about politics.”

“Listen, if we worry about what’s impacting the American people, the politics will take care of itself,” he continued. “The politicians that are gazing at polls — there is a reason why the most common sentiment across this country is that politicians aren’t listening to us, there’s a reason why Congress has a 10 to 15 percent approval rating.”

Unless I’m misunderstanding Ted here, he’s basically saying that people are spending too much time looking at polls and not enough time finding out what people think — which is, of course, complete nonsense. Polls are what people think. That’s the whole freakin’ point.

So let’s take a look at what people are thinking about the shutdown and how it’s not hurting the GOP at all, shall we?

Teagan Goddard: A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that if the 2014 midterm elections were held today, Republicans “would be in grave danger of losing control of the House of Representatives.”

In a series of 24 surveys in GOP-held House districts, Republican incumbents are behind in match ups with generic Democratic challengers in 17 districts. In 4 other districts, the incumbent Republican trails after being told that the incumbent supported the government shutdown. In just 3 districts are incumbents leading generic challengers after voters are told the incumbent supported the government shutdown.

Democrats need 17 seats to win control of the House. These results show that if the election were held today, such a pickup would be within reach.

Ted Cruz is Chicken Little in reverse; he’s saying everything is fine, while the sky actually is falling.

And it’s falling hard.

People explaining why they prefer the Affordable Care Act over 'Obamacare'

GOP plan to stand with the American people not going very well

Quinnipiac: American voters oppose 72 - 22 percent Congress shutting down the federal government to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Voters also oppose 64 - 27 percent blocking an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling as a way to stop Obamacare, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
[…]
President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 - 49 percent overall job approval rating, compared to his 46 - 48 percent score August 2.

American voters disapprove 74 - 17 percent of the job Republicans in Congress are doing, their lowest score ever, and disapprove 60 - 32 percent of the job Democrats are doing.

"Americans are certainly not in love with Obamacare, but they reject decisively the claim by Congressional Republicans that it is so bad that it’s worth closing down the government to stop it," says Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

“President Barack Obama enters this standoff over the budget with an edge over Congressional Republicans in the voters’ eyes.”

Republicans have been claiming they stand with voters here, but they so clearly do not — and it may cost them dearly in the future.

Looking at the 2014 Congressional races, voters pick a generic Democrat over a generic Republican candidate 43 - 34 percent, the widest Democratic margin measured so far.

“On almost all questions, voters see President Obama as more reasonable, and better able to handle the issues,” Brown said. “But it is not because the president is beloved. He remains under water in job approval and is tied with Congressional Republicans on who best handles the budget deficit. Voters are angry at almost everyone in Washington over their inability to keep the trains running, but they are madder at the Republicans than the Democrats.

“In general, the Republican brand is down as evidenced by the Democrats’ unusually large lead in the so called generic ballot. But we have 13 months before an election can translate this public opinion edge into electoral gains and in politics that amount of time is forever.”

Hands up, who thinks Republicans plan on being less crazy and irresponsible in the coming thirteen months? Who’s been living in a broom closet since 2010?

[photo by IPBrian]

Congress stampedes the exits for Aug. recess, leaving the nation’s problems to smoulder

Politico: The government shuts down Sept. 30. The farm bill isn’t done. The appropriations process is in shambles. Immigration reform is stagnant.

And Congress is heading for the exits.

Thetensions on Capitol Hill are high, as legislative achievements are low.

The anger, frustration and disappointment was exposed after the House Republican leadership pulled a transportation spending bill from the floor this week because funding levels were too high for some, too low for others. Instead of recalibrating, House Republicans moved onto a series of bills aimed at stopping what they consider government abuse — legislation that dovetails with their August messaging.

Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), the chair of the subcommittee that wrote the bill, stood up at a Wednesday afternoon meeting and yelled at attendees — including his best friend, Speaker John Boehner — “this is bullshit,” referring to leadership pulling his bill without warning.

Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), so frustrated by the stymied pace of spending bills, said he won’t pen a year-long continuing resolution, and his committee will not vote for it. The House has passed just four of 12 appropriations bills.

As Congress leaves town for a five-week recess, it faces no shortage of unsolved challenges. There is no clear strategy for funding the government beyond Sept. 30 and lifting the debt ceiling, the two fiscal fights looming in the fall.

According to Politico reporter Ginger Gibson, Nancy Pelosi said sarcastically, “We have to go home by noon on Friday because we have nothing else to do."

No wonder Congress is literally less popular than root canals, cockroaches, North Korea, or lice.

[image via UpNorth Memories - Donald (Don) Harrison]

Rightwing blogosphere catches a dose of Mad Deer Disease

This one’s kind of hilarious, once you get past the sad. So here goes the sad: a bunch of armed government agents raided a Society of St. Francis animal shelter in Wisconsin to take out a baby deer. No doubt, they were concerned about Chronic Wasting Disease, which is like Mad Cow for deer. When you come across an orphaned fawn, you’ve got to wonder what happened to mom, especially when you’re fighting a contagion that constantly threatens to turn into an epidemic. In any case, it’s a violation of law to keep wildlife.

OK, so that’s the sad.

It turns out that the wingnut blogosphere got wind of this, including the National Review’s Mark Steyn, who’s regarded as one of the smart guys on the right. Anyhoo, this is the worst thing ever and an example of big federal gummint overreach and here comes communism and HIDE THE CHILDREN FOR THE SWEET LOVE OF GOD!

The whole thing was done under the auspices of the Department of Natural Resources. If that federal agency doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it doesn’t exist — not as a federal agency, anyway. It’s a state agency. A Wisconsin state agency. A Wisconsin state agency that’s part of the administration of Tea Party hero Gov. Scott Walker. It’s not an example of federal government gone mad, it’s one of local government losing it’s marbles under one of their beloved authoritarian ideologues.

Let the furious backpedaling begin.

[photo by star5112]

Guess where it’s hardest to escape poverty?

David Leonhardt provides us with the above map showing the rate at which people escape poverty at various locations in the United States. And the deep south red states are appropriately red. For all their talk about giving people in poverty “a hand up, not a hand out," they seem to do a remarkable lousy job of doing either. And of course, another region hard hit is the rust belt, once a union stronghold where fair wages prevailed, which has fallen into hard times with the decline in organized labor and the resulting hits to the economy and tax base that comes with slowly sinking wages.

In Wisconsin, we too have a spot of red. That’d be Milwaukee County mostly, formerly run by our current Governor, Scott Walker. While it’s tempting to blame Milwaukee’s situation on Walker, it’s probably truer to blame it on former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who pioneered “welfare reform" that cuts people off of assistance for life after a set period of time. After Thompson’s legislation passed, rent-to-own, car title loan, and payday lender outfits sprouted up all over the place like mushrooms, leaving people trapped in poverty by tying a boat anchor to their legs in the form of a debt trap. Billed as a way to help people escape poverty, welfare reform has had the opposite result — leaving me to wonder if feeding the poor to usurious wolves wasn’t the plan all along. It’s telling that right next to the Milwaukee area on the map is the Madison area, where those crazy, pie-in-the-sky liberal economic policies nearly double the rate at which people escape poverty comparatively. Where Milwaukee’s rate is 5.6%, Madison drags the percentage — despite the anti-poor policies of the state — up to 10.2%.

In any case, we need a reversal of Republican policies, rather than a continuation of them. “Poor kids don’t exactly have a great chance in life no matter where they live, but in the South, they have almost no chance at all," writes Kevin Drum. “If you take a look at the policy preferences of Southern governors and legislatures, that’s apparently exactly the way they like it."

Behold the miserable failure who is Scott Walker

WisPolitics.com: New federal numbers showed an improvement in the state’s job growth ranking, but were decried by Democrats as another example of Gov. Scott Walker’s failure on the jobs front.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Wisconsin gained 62,082 private sector jobs from December 2010 through 2012, and gained 32,282 of those jobs from December 2011 through 2012.

Wisconsin ranked 33rd in private sector job growth over the 2011-12 time period and 34th in job growth over the 2010-2012 period that covers Walker’s first two years in office. Wisconsin’s 1.4 percent private sector job growth rate over the last year still lags behind the national average of 2.3 percent, but improves on the state’s third quarter ranking of 44th out of the 50 states.

Dems seized on the overall jobs ranking — combining both public sector and private sector job growth — in those first two years to argue Walker’s policies have failed.

“The fact remains that under Gov. Walker, Wisconsin ranks 38th in the country in job growth — dead last in the Midwest,” said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha. “And despite clear evidence that the Republican plan hasn’t worked well economically for Wisconsin, Gov. Walker’s budget doubles down on bad economic policy.“

That last is what’s been bothering me. The current proposed budget — which legislative Republicans are certain to pass — is idiotic. If you had no idea what Wisconsin’s economy was like and you looked at this thing, you’d assume that Wisconsin was just rolling in the dough. It’s just another example of how Republicans always seem to believe that if something’s not working, you need to do more of it. Earlier, Walker blamed the recall for driving the economy down. “I think the big thing that people are waiting for is to have the certainty of knowing that this sort of positive outlook for job creators is going to continue," Walker said at the time. “That’s why I think that after June 5th, after these primaries are done, and when I and the lieutenant governor and these senators prevail, I think it means there will be a clear message to the job creators and the small businesses in the state that now is the time to add jobs."

OK, so where are these “job creators"? Why is Wisconsin trapped in a contractionary period when the rest of the country is in recovery, despite the fact that the recalls are long over?

Hey, maybe tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, and undermining consumer demand by attacking the lower and middle classes isn’t such a genius move after all. In two years, we’ll be just as bad off — if not worse. Republicans run the legislature and the governor’s mansion. Walker has no one else to blame. He owns this shithole of an economy he created, whether he wants to or not.

This man will never be president, even though every bone in his body aches for it. His breathtaking incompetence will see to that.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Scott Walker’s economic policies have the upward momentum of a boat anchor

The National Memo: Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) is a conservative hero with a record of taking progressives and unions in a state that went for Obama and beating them twice. He’s cut government, taken away worker protections and empowered the private sector, making him the Republican insiders’ favorite for the 2016 GOP nomination.

His only problem is, his economic policies continue to fail — miserably.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has ranked the Badger State 49th in its 50-state Leading Index report for April. With an index rank of -0.74 percent, Wisconsin was one of only five states to show contraction.

…Walker doesn’t really have any positive economic data to point to. Since he took office, his state has fallen from 11th to 44th in job creation. Wisconsin’s wages are also declining at twice the national level.

The piece goes on to mention that Walker’s proposed budget “reads more like a campaign document than a plan to create jobs,” with your typical Republican tax cut for the rich and plenty of corporate welfare. “The governor is also rejecting Medicaid expansion and using the Affordable Care Act exchanges to kick 87,000 Wisconsinites off his state’s Badgercare program,” we’re told. The governor’s super-genius healthcare plan also costs taxpayers $150 million more than accepting the federal expansion.

The man is an economic disaster and a complete failure as a governor. Anyone still holding out hope for him to make good on his 250,000 new jobs promise is an amazing chump. It’s just not going to happen. Even he seems to have given up on it — it’s suddenly become a “goal,” instead of a promise.

At the center of this smoking crater lies the bomb that created it — bass-ackward Republican economic policies. He’s attacked demand at every opportunity and practiced the supply-side horseshit that has never, ever worked anywhere. You can’t cut workers’ pay and benefits, then expect them to keep up the same level of demand. Meanwhile, those big tax cuts haven’t managed to “trickle down,” mostly because they never do. Walker’s attacks on workers have had the effect that every serious person warned they would and Wisconsin’s citizens are paying the price.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

GOP Celebrity Task Force plan falls apart due to lack of GOP celebrities

Politico: The Republican National Committee is meeting this week in the most touristy part of Tinseltown, but it’s apparent the “Celebrity Task Force” recommended by last month’s “autopsy” report isn’t going to happen.

The proposed task force was the most mocked of 219 suggestions from a five-member committee tasked with looking into why the party fared so poorly in 2012.

“The Party is seen as old and detached from pop culture,” the group said. “Establish an RNC Celebrity Task Force of personalities in the entertainment industry to host events for the RNC and allow donors to participate in entertainment events as a way to attract younger voters.”

The problem here is summed up in one paragraph:

Courtney King, identified as an “actress” on the schedule, appeared on a panel later in the afternoon about “winning the women’s vote.” But it’s not clear who she is or what she has appeared in.

This is all hilarious and, by all means, indulge in all the schadenfreude you want. But it’s more than just a “point and laugh” story. It also indicates a real lack of planning on Reince Priebus’ part. it seems like the Celebrity Task Force was an idea developed without doing any research at all, which really ought to make people question the rest of Reince’s big plan. Apparently, this whole rebranding effort is based on a bunch of ideas someone jotted down on a cocktail napkin during a brainstorming session at TGI Fridays.

They might’ve taken the time to check and see if any of these ideas were actually workable.

"Uni-Tea" Diversity Rally Largely Uni-Racial, Actual Diversity a No Show

Take that, NAACP! Teabaggers were out in the thousands dozens yesterday for a "Uni-Tea" rally designed to prove just how not-racist they really are. Things did not go well:

Talking Points Memo:

It was billed as the most diverse tea party rally ever. For three hours Saturday afternoon, we waited for the diversity to show up.

Was Saturday's Uni-Tea rally in Philadelphia a success? Well, it depends on your definition of "epic fail." If you're more on the defensive end of the tea party spectrum, you would have left the rally this afternoon even more convinced that the movement is not now about race and never has been. If you're the kind of tea partier who'd like to see that abounding not-racism result in some actual demographic diversity in the movement, the Uni-Tea rally appeared to be a borderline disaster.

The crowd apparently peaked at about 500, so not extremely impressive. I guess a rally without all the racism doesn't seem very attractive to a lot of teabaggers.

Bonus fun, a quick look at all that diversity:

White person, white person, white person, white person -- Ooh look! A black lady! -- white person, white person, white person, white person.

Wow, it's like a freakin' rainbow.

(h/t for video: Chico Brisbane)