Mitt’s Sister Souljah moment, a debate preview, debate questions you won’t hear, the stock market: liberal friendly, manufacturing jobs: also liberal friendly, Tommy Thompson goes too far, ending women’s suffrage, the dark side of China’s economic boom, the Internet buys Joe Biden a Trans Am, George Romney aide says Mitt no George, and Romney treats his staff like children.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, we have The Washington Post’s Matt Miller posing a hypothetical situation for Mitt Romney, similar to Bill Clinton’s 1992 Sistah Souljah moment:
“So here’s what I’ll pledge. Once we’ve done all we can sensibly do to restrain federal spending – which we absolutely must do – and we still need resources to balance our budget and fund things like infrastructure and research to build for the future, then people in my fortunate position should absolutely be asked to contribute something more in taxes. And I’ll make the case to the country that this is needed. I know that’s different from what I’ve been saying, but on reflection I think it’s the right thing for the country.”
To that I would reply: ten to one.
Let’s talk about a real Sistah Souljah moment for Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney goes on stage and, after a question about abortion or gay marriage, delivers the following answer:
I’ve struggled with this question for a long time. I’ve consulted my family, my advisors, and everyone else that’s important to me, and I’ve come to one inescapable conclusion: the Culture War is killing America.
We have spent so much time bickering and arguing over ultimately meaningless things like abortion and gay marriage that somehow a bunch of grifters, clowns, and bagmen took over the Republican party and have been using it to raid the national treasury.
So, if elected, I will declare a culture war truce over the next four years to focus exclusively on economic issues and putting America back to work. I will not sign a single piece of culture war legislation until this country is back on its feet.
Moreover, it’s time to end the mountains of corporate and multi-billionaire cash that have infected and degraded our political process. During my first 100 days in office, I will instruct the Congress to create new legislation to end the unchecked scourge of influence peddling in our government, which when passed I will sign.
Finally, I will end the Drug War. After thousands of wasted lives, billions of dollars, and decades of time, we are no closer today to ending the scourge of illegal drugs than we were forty years ago. In fact, we have made the problem worse, locking up a greater proportion of our population than the Soviets did under Stalin and Lenin, the majority of whom are minorities.
It’s time to focus on treatment, not punishment, for small time recreational users and addicts. To rehabilitate those that have spent a lifetime in and out of prison into productive members of society.
Finally, it’s time to reinvest in American education. I will request of Congress a budget that transfers one fifth of the Pentagon’s annual budget toward public education in the United States. If we are to rebuild America, then the cornerstone, the foundation, must be an public educational system that churns out the brightest, best educated, best prepared workers in the world.
That’s a Sistah Souljah moment. That’s Mitt Romney repudiating his entire extremist base in favor of common sense policies that everyone can get behind.
That little speech would lose Mitt Romney the election.
Romney’s base has no appetite for compromise. They have no desire to see him repudiate the extremism in his own party, because his own party is hopelessly extremist. They want to watch the world burn, and are more than content to let Romney hold the matches and gas.
Next up, we have Charles P. Pierce, who predicts that this debate will be boring:
Romney has so battered the political dialogue — and the English language — with his 100-pound bullshit sledge that he has pretty much shaped the narrative of the campaign in such a fashion that his fanatical devotion to barefaced non-facts has become a weird kind of status quo. Far too many people in this business have accepted the Etch-A-Sketch argument to the point at which whether something is true or not is measured by its effectiveness as a tactic. “He had to run to the right in the primaries and then ‘pivot’ to the center in the general” — that’s something that makes the political wiseguys look smart, but, taken literally, it means that the entire election process in the world’s oldest self-governing republic is a contest to find out who can most smoothly move from one set of lies to another, and it is also a recipe for depriving the people who ultimately will make that decision of the kind of information they need to do so.
Basically, our political process is a game of “Catch The Greased Up Deaf Guy”.
Two things that you should consider tonight whilst watching Mitt Romney wax poetic about how, as a businessman, he knows how to fix the economy:
1) The stock market has done better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.
2) Manufacturing jobs are gained during Democratic administrations, and lost under Republican ones.
Could Mitt Romney be the Magic Republican that manages to beat the odds, grow the stock market, and gain manufacturing jobs? Sure. Also possible: monkeys could fly out of my butt. Frankly, I’d put the chances of either happening at about equal.
Tommy Thompson has officially hopped on my last nerve. He decided to call his opponent, Democratic Congresswoman, triple amputee, and veteran soldier Tammy Baldwin “anti-Jewish” and “anti-Israel”.
You know what, Republicans? KEEP MY NAME OUT YA DAMN MOUTHS.
Your enabling of Israel’s batshit insane foreign policy, including Bibi Netanyahu’s hard-on for turning Tehran into a glass parking lot, is the source of a huge amount of tension in the middle east. Moreover, the Jewish people are a proud people with a long memory that, in case you haven’t noticed, are like 95%+ liberal. I am sick to death of my heritage being used like a bludgeon every time some conservative wants to suck up to their Christian dominionist base which NEEDS the Jews in Israel to bring about the Rapture. I’m sorry that the whims and desires of my people don’t fit nicely into the needs of your biblical literalist supporters. Personally, I’d rather all of you just FUCK OFF, and leave us the hell alone.
Ahem.
Ladies, if any of you would like to volunteer to write a screed about misogynist Republicans keeping your names out they damn mouths, please, feel free to let me know.
The New Yorker has a tremendous article on the cost of China’s rapid high-speed rail expansion.
Basically, the Chinese, for all their bluster, are imitative, sloppy, and absolutely corrupt. This is why the idea of China as some kind of up and coming superpower, to me at least, is laughable.
Via Wonkette, the Internet wants to buy Joe Biden a Trans Am. Fuck it, I’m in for twenty bucks.
Sick burn, brah.
And finally, apparently Mitt puts his staff in time outs when they misbehave. Is there anyone this man doesn’t treat like a child?
