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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (7971)	2/28/2009 10:26:31 PM
From: pompsander	Respond to of 103300

Actually, Bill Clinton did say the era of big government was over, so that could be analogized to saying the era of FDR was over. (he was wrong). The Democrats love Rush. As long as he is the face of the republican party, they can demonize him by pointing out his Michael J. Fox moments, his heavily defended wish that Obama fail (even Mitt is backing away from that one), his "halfrican" jokes...all the polarizing moments. Rush has his audience. Be it ten million or twenty million, they already will vote republican. He won't win over the 10 percent in the middle of the electorate who can be influenced to move from one party to the other in a national election. Like Michael Moore, he is great for the other side to have around as the face of the party. Smart politicos, like Romney, understand this and want Rush to take a back seat.

To: longnshort who wrote (7971)	2/28/2009 10:31:13 PM
From: pompsander	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

Obama 1, Limbaugh 0 I'm struck by the dissonance between the speeches today given by the president and by the leader of the opposition. Here's Obama, shrewdly observed by Al Giordano: I know that the insurance industry won't like the idea that they'll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that's how we'll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families. I know that banks and big student lenders won't like the idea that we're ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that's how we'll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable. I know that oil and gas companies won't like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that's how we'll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries. I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: 'So am I.' I concede I couldn't make it through all of Limbaugh's tirade (it was Castro-esque in its length, bombast and reception). I'm actually sympathetic to the broad argument that government is usually not the solution to our problems, and I'm leery of the massive spending this president has proposed in a depression - just as I was leery of the massive spending the last presidentaccomplished in a bubble. But what I heard most of all from Limbaugh was the demonization of libruls, again and again and again. Limbaugh is attacking the motives and good faith of more than half the country - and of a president just elected in a landslide. Limbaugh takes us right back to the 1980s and 1990s - the old red-blue paradigm that has led to massive GOP losses. But Obama has reframed his opponents as the vested interests resisting reform. Who do you think will win on that battlefield? andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

To: longnshort who wrote (7971)	2/28/2009 10:36:21 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

Bush a four-letter word at CPAC By ANDY BARR \| 2/28/09 4:10 PM EST Text Size: Conservatives aren’t sure who’s the Republican presidential frontrunner in 2012. They disagree over how sharply to attack President Barack Obama and on the question of whether a back-to-basics approach is the path back to majority. But if there’s one thing those attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week agree on, it is this: They don’t want another George W. Bush. Few come out right out and say it, but they don’t have to. There’s no nostalgia for the past eight years, no tributes to Bush and no sessions dedicated to exploring his presidency. Indeed, for a president who publicly embraced conservative principles, there is little evidence that the movement returns the sentiment. When the subject of the 43rd president has come up at CPAC — where he spoke each year of his presidency — it’s usually been in an unflattering context. Conservative icon Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, railed against the “Bush-Obama continuity in economic policy” and the “Bush-Obama big spending program” in a speech Friday. "We had big spending under Bush and now we have big spending under Obama," Gingrich said. "And so now we have two failures." He wasn’t the only high-profile conservative taking shots at the former president. “I wish the president would have laid [a stimulus package] out before he left office, so that in September, October, November, December, there would have been a stimulus plan,” former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney said Friday in an interview with POLITICO, adding that the GOP has yet to come up with unified policy proposals or a clear, positive voice. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, like Romney an unsuccessful candidate for president in 2008, pointed to the Bush administration’s failed response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “You know what kind of conservatives we need most? Competent conservatives,” Huckabee said in a speech Thursday. “It’s when we lose our competence, that Americans lose their confidence.” “We’re no longer Reagan’s shining city on a hill; we are the ruined city by the sea,” he added. While the 9,000 registered attendants represented the top turnout in the conference’s history, the series of speeches, panels, meeting, dinners and parties was dominated by questions about the direction of the conservative movement and the Republican Party in the post-Bush era. The absence of two of the party’s most recognizable conservatives, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), only added to the uncertainty since CPAC has traditionally served as an early proving ground for GOP presidential contenders and their ideas. politico.com

To: longnshort who wrote (7971)	2/28/2009 10:41:06 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 103300

The American Conservative joins others in wondering just when the republicans will stop embarrasing themselves with trying to be "hip"? _____________________________- Slums Are For Lovers? Posted on February 26th, 2009 by Daniel Larison Digg (0) Stumble Upon Newsvine Slashdot Mixx (0) Diigo Google Delicious Reddit Facebook What on earth is this? Well, it is an interview between Michael Steele and ABC Radio’s Curtis Sliwa, but beyond that I don’t know how else to describe it: SLIWA: Now, using a little bit of that street terminology, are you giving him [Jindal] any Slum love, Michael? STEELE: (laughter) SLIWA: Because he is — when guys look at him and young women look at him — they say oh, that’s the slumdog millionaire, governor. So, give me some slum love. STEELE: I love it. (inaudible) … some slum love out to my buddy. Gov. Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin’ awesome job in his state. He’s really turned around on some core principles — like hey, government ought not be corrupt. The good stuff … the easy stuff. Steele elaborates elsewhere on his efforts to make the GOP more hip-hop-friendly: Curtis Sliwa: When you used the hip-hop vernacular, man, Barack Obama has bling bling in this stimulus package, you got people’s attention. Michael Steele: Absolutely. There’s a lot of bling bling — the bling bling’s got bling bling in this package. That’s how bad it is. There are no words sufficient to express my bewilderment. In case you think Steele is just kidding around, here is more: Curtis Sliwa: You ain’t ever gonna get Mitt Romney in a room with Ludacris high fiving over the RNC. Michael Steele: Watch him, watch me. Look, I’ll never forget when I got Russell Simmons and former chairman Ed Gillespie in the same room in 2004. It can happen and it will happen. This party has got to take it’s head out of it’s you know what and recognize that America doesn’t look like America in 1952. That America now is something very different, very beautiful — that has a lot of strips and strains to it. But, it’s real and we’ve got to get in the real. Of course, that calls to mind Romney’s, um, memorable moment when he asked a crowd of black kids in his well-meaning, ridiculous way, “Who let the dogs out?” Update: Ta-Nehisi Coates asks Michael Steele to stop the madness. This brings up something else that I should have mentioned in the original post: what is Steele’s target audience when he talks like this? It can’t be American desis, that much is certain. I mean, Jindal’s mother is a Punjabi nuclear physicist, and he was a Rhodes scholar who studied at Oxford. No one would confuse him for someone who grew up in the slums of Mumbai. The success of Jindal’s parents and Jindal’s own success have nothing to do with the sort of random luck of Slumdog Millionaire’s main character, but when presented with a chance to say that Steele opts to endorse this “slum love” nonsense. It’s bad enough when Republicans practice the phony populism of pretending to be a down-home country boy when they are, in fact, well-heeled lawyers and lobbyists who live at the Watergate, or when they valorize politicians for knowing less than they should, but are they so out of it that one of their leaders talks about one of their smartest, best-educated elected officials like this? amconmag.com