Minorities Running Roughshod

“I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is [sic] not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!”

• Jason Rapert, Arkansas State Senator, 2011
• Source: video
• Context: Rapert made these comments at a Tea Party rally in 2011.

Who Better Than Me

“Who better than me, that’s already finished one of the entitlement programs ,to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?”

• Tommy G. Thompson, Republian Senate candidate for Wisconsin, June 4, 2012
• Source: video
• Context: Thompson was speaking at a meeting on June 4 of the Lake Country Area Defenders of Liberty, a Tea Party group, in Oconomowoc. He faces Democrat Tammy Baldwin in the November 6 election for a seat in the Senate. Thompson’s campaign responded by saying that he simply wants to reform Medicaid and Medicare.

Not How Big Leaders Talk

“This is not how big leaders talk, it’s how shallow campaign operatives talk: They slice and dice the electorate like that, they see everything as determined by this interest or that. They’re usually young enough and dumb enough that nobody holds it against them, but they don’t know anything. They don’t know much about America. We are a big, complicated nation. And we are human beings. We are people. We have souls. We are complex. We are not data points. Many things go into our decisions and our political affiliations.”

• Peggy Noonan, special assistant to Ronald Reagan and conservative columnist, September 18, 2012
• Source: Time For An Intervention (Noonan’s blog for the Wall Street Journal)
• Context: Noonan was commenting on the now viral video of Mitt Romney dismissing half of the country, the “47%”, many of whom are Republican. In her article, she implies that Romney is not experienced enough and that his campaign is horribly managed and called for an intervention:

“It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. It’s not big, it’s not brave, it’s not thoughtfully tackling great issues. It’s always been too small for the moment. All the activists, party supporters and big donors should be pushing for change.”

Country Club Fantasy

“Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.”

• David Brooks, conservative columnist, September 17, 2012
• Source: Thurston Howell Romney
• Context: Brooks wrote a piece for the New York Times criticizing Romney’s comments from a private fundraiser in May which have now become viral after they were leaked by Mother Jones. In it, he describes Romney as being out of touch politically, socially, and culturally. Fact checkers have already pointed out that Romney’s comments about welfare and those on it are false and misleading, but Brooks goes even further, pointing out that many people on welfare are Republicans:

“The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.”

• On Romney being out of touch, he said:

“First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?”

“First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?”

“It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.”

“Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.”

“The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency. But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills. People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.”

Not Worrying About Those People

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

• Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012
• Source: video
• Context: Mitt Romney, speaking at a private fundraiser earlier this year at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder, made several controversial remarks, one being his unfounded criticism of people on welfare and that his job is “not to worry about those people.” Mother Jones has recently released several videos of the private fundraiser, which have now gone viral. In them, Romney talks about his campaign strategy, boasts that some of his consultants have worked for political leaders all over the world (including Netanyahu), and criticizes the Obama administration. In another set of videos, also released by Mother Jones, at the same fundraiser, Romney discusses foreign policy. Among them, he is against the Palestinians having their own independent state. After one donor criticized his campaign, wondering why they were not attacking Obama on a more intellectual level, Romney responded by saying:

“In a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject—discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn’t win elections.”

• His campaign has been heavily criticized for its false attacks, misrepresentation of the facts, and outright lies. On one occasion, his campaign pollster stated that the Romney campaign would not be dictated to by fact checkers. Another video purported to be of Romney speaking at a private fundraiser was released in late August.

I Don’t Care

“I don’t care what fact check says.”

• Peter King, Republican Congressman from New York, September 17, 2012
• Source: video
• Context: Republicans, including the Romney campaign, have recently, and falsely, attacked President Obama for “apologizing” for America. Peter King reiterated this Republican talking point n CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien. When O’Brien pointed out that independent fact checkers, such as factcheck.org (and The Washington Post), have determined that the President has never apologized for America, King stated that he doesn’t “care what fact check says.” O’Brien responded by saying that “There are fact checks. You may not care, but they’re a fact checker.”

Leftist Minions

“Pillar after pillar after pillar holding up this shining city on the hill and what are we faced with? the president of the United States and his leftist minions out there every day with their little jackhammers chiseling away at those pillars, undermining those pillars of American exceptionalism, attempting to bring down the shining city on the ills, turn it into rubble. And they have no idea what they would build on top of the rubble but I know this: we are not going to let them do that. We are going to refurbish those pillars, we are going to strengthen the shining city on the hill. We’re going to serve God and country in that order. There is a fine future for the United States of America and we’re going to have a chance to live it and when that victory comes it will be His victory, not our victory, it will be in his time not our time. God bless you all. God bless America.”

• Steve King, Republican Congressman from Iowa, September 14, 2012
• Source: video
• Context: King was speaking at the Values Voter Summit, where he implied that Barack Obama was the ant-Christ and that he and his “leftist minions” were destroying America. He also went on to say that if President Obama is defeated in this years election, it will have been because God defeated him.

A Racist Organization

“Besides slavery, abortion is the other darkest stain on our nation’s character. And this president is looking for every way possible to make abortion more available and more frequent, and he wants you to pay for it — even if you disagree with it. Welcome to another provision of Obamacare.

…

I am the adoptive father of four children, each of them either — each of them either black, Hispanic, Native American, and I am incensed that this president pays money to an entity that was created for the sole purpose of killing children that look like mine — a racist organization, and it continues specifically to target minorities for abortion destruction.”

• Tim Huelskamp, Republican Congressman from Kansas, September 14, 2012
• Source: NBC News
• Context: Tim Huelskamp made the comments at the 2o12 Values Voters Summit, referring to President Obama’s funding of Planned Parenthood. However, as FactCheck.org has pointed out, only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s are abortions, and 10% of the organizations clients receive an abortion. Furthermore, federal funding cannot be (by law) and is not used to fund Planned Parenthood’s abortion services.

The Worst of Both Worlds

“Romney needed to decide long ago who he was: the last of the Rockefeller Republicans (and thus somebody who probably wouldn’t have gotten through Iowa) or a genuine movement conservative with detailed ideas about how to right the country. We have a nominee who represents the worst of both worlds. Any swing voter attracted by moderate Republicanism can’t vote for a man who ran away from his core convictions. And conservative voters don’t believe Romney has any core convictions.”

• Joe Scarborough, former Republican member of the House of Representatives and cable news and radio host, September 12, 2012
• Source: The Problem With Mitt (opinion piece for Politico)
• Context: Joe Scarborough critiques Mitt Romney and his campaign, saying that they are practically giving away an election that should have been a sure win for the Republican Party. Apart from all of the campaigns blunders and gaffe’s, Scarborough contends that the real problem is with Mitt Romney himself:

“If we want to win the battle of ideas in the long term, we should be willing to face the fact that Mitt Romney is likely to lose — and should, given that he’s neither a true conservative nor a courageous moderate. He’s just an ambitious man. Nothing wrong with that, except when you want to be president. Great leaders combine ambition and ideas and conviction.”

An Apocalyptic Cult

In an interview published on September 4, 2012 with Bill Moyers (video & transcript), Mike Lofgren,  life long Republican and congressional aide, discusses the problems he sees within the Republican Party today. Lofgren blasts the Party’s economic platform, saying:

“The party is really oriented towards the concerns of the rich. It’s about cutting their taxes, reducing regulation on business, making things wide open for Wall Street. Now you’re not going to get anybody to the polls and consciously pull the lever for the Republicans if they say, “Our agenda is to further entrench the rich and, oh by the way, your pension may take a hit.”

So they use the culture wars quite cynically, as essentially rube bait to get people to the polls. And that explains why, for instance, the Koch brothers were early funders of Michele Bachmann, who is a darling of the religious right. They don’t care particularly, I would assume, about her religious foibles. What they care about is the bottom line. And these religious right candidates, many of them believing in the health and wealth, name it and claim it prosperity gospel, believe that the rich are sanctified and the poor punished”

Bill Moyers points out that many Republicans and those on the right would blame Obama for the worsening situation of the middle class, to which Lofgren respond by saying that those individuals have “selective amnesia”:

“I think they’re suffering from selective amnesia. They also don’t understand that George Bush doubled the national debt, that the original meltdown on Wall Street occurred during George Bush’s watch, and by the time Obama became president in 2009, we were already well into the recession. Now I don’t defend him in every way. I don’t say that everything he’s done is right by any means. I have all kinds of issues with him on the health care legislation. For instance, his willingness to play ball with pharma made the bill cost a lot more than it need.”

He also discusses the Republican Party’s obstructionism and his reasons for leaving the party, something many moderate Republicans have either been forced to do or have done willingly (see here and here for example):

“We were in a very, very serious situation in this country. If the economy had fallen any further, it would be comparable to the Great Depression. So what is Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate, what is his first priority for the country? Is it getting jobs for people? Is it restoring the solvency of the financial system? Is it foreign policy? Is it any of those things? No, it’s making sure Obama is a one-term president.

…

But now it’s basically obstruct. They’re no longer a parliamentary loyal opposition. They want to seize up the wheels of government. And to most people that means you don’t have federal inspectors of airliners. You don’t have federal inspection of food safety. Your national parks will be closed. Federal law enforcement will go home. That’s what that means.

…

I left the party because it was becoming an apocalyptic cult. Because you cannot govern a country of 310 million people that is the greatest economic power on earth and the greatest military power on earth as if it’s a banana republic. You can’t govern it with people who think that Obama was born overseas or who believe in all manner of nonsense about climate change. They don’t even know, apparently, where babies come from, if we’re to believe Todd Akin.”

Lofgren goes on to talk about the need for more regulations, less polarization in politics, and the negative influence of money in politics