Today’s topics: Republicans are terrible people, and the Daily Sausage’s first political endorsement.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First off, let’s talk about Dick. Dick Morris that is, who penned a column so astoundingly stupid my eyes literally bled as I read it. It’s titled “Here comes the landslide”, in which Mr. Morris predicts that Mitt Romney will win 362 to 176 electoral votes over President Obama.
So, how does Dick do it? Welp, he gives Romney New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Jersey(!), Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, and Oregon(!).
If you’re a political columnist, advisor, etc., and you’re predicting that in 2012 the Republican nominee for President may carry Oregon and New Jersey, you need to share whatever drugs you are on because they are clearly some really good shit.
That brings us to today’s topic: Republicans are terrible people.
Throughout this long campaign season, I’ve refrained from calling Republicans terrible people. I know plenty of people that I like and respect that call themselves Republicans. Today, that ends. If you are going to call yourself a Republican, then it’s time you be brought to account for the actions of those that do as well.
We turn our gaze to Florida, which may yet again decide the President of the United States, where Republican Governor Rick Scott has engaged in the most comprehensive attack on voting rights since Jim Crow was passed.
There were a few hiccups Sunday, with strange poll watchers—some authorized, some not—showing up at the Souls’ Polls site trying to cause problems. One watcher tried to challenge a voter over her acceptance of fried fish. Stories vary on what happened, but according to Lewis, a poll watcher—a white woman in a sea of black voters—reported to poll judges that a woman headed to the voting line was bribed with a fish sandwich to vote for Obama.
Another poll watcher, described by Lewis as being a Republican Party-appointed watcher, asked poll judges if they “could stop or slow down” the number of voters entering the library because it was getting crowded. Then one poll watcher tried to interrogate an 11-year-old girl about what all the fish serving and gospel music playing was about. In every case, the watcher was confronted by lawyers from the Election Protection team who were at the site in full force, dozens of lawyers, authorized poll watchers and volunteers from the NAACP, SEIU, Obama for America campaign and the Hillsborough County Democratic Black Caucus. The voters were barely disrupted.
And now to Wisconsin, home of Republican Governor Scott Walker:
The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a “concerned citizen” instead. As Kristina Sesek, Romney’s legal counsel who just graduated from Marquette Law School last year, explained, “We’re going to have you sign in this election cycle as a ‘concerned citizen.’ We’re just trying to alleviate some of the animosity of being a Republican observer up front.”
On to Michigan, where both Chrylser and GM are rebuking Mitt Romney:
Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubioustelevision and radio ads suggesting thatChrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies.
A spokesperson for General Motors told the Detroit Free Press that the ad was, more or less, crass and misleading.
“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days,” GM spokesman Greg Martin said. “No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”
The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.
And in Iowa, where Republican Congressman Steve King is demanding strings attached to FEMA aid for Hurricane Sandy victims:
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said on Tuesday that federal aid for people impacted by Hurricane Sandy should be approved only with a specific spending plan in place so funds are not used for “Gucci bags and massage parlors,” like after Hurricane Katrina.
“I want to get them the resources that are necessary to lift them out of this water and the sand and the ashes and the death that’s over there in the East Coast and especially in the Northeast,” King said during a Tuesday evening debate in Mason City, Iowa.
“But not one big shot to just open up the checkbook, because they spent it on Gucci bags and massage parlors and everything you can think of in addition to what was necessary,” he said later, referring to Hurricane Katrina.
Also in northern Virginia, where the Republican-affiliated Americans For Tax Reform (headed by Grover Norquist) dumped a flier invoking Hurricane Sandy:
An anti-Obama flier invoking Hurricane Sandy was reportedly distributed by conservative activist Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Houston Chronicle reported Tuesday.
The advertisement, which appeared on northern Virginia doorsteps starting Tuesday, features a photo of President Obama superimposed over a storm image.
“We’ve seen storms in Virginia, but none like this …” reads the flier. “Barack Obama’s policies have added $4 billion in debt each day he’s been in office. Americans can’t afford this debt.”
A sting of vitriol-laden text messages hit voters’ phones Tuesday night, blasting President Barack Obama with anti-gay attacks and false claims.
In what appeared to be a coordinated campaign of cell phone text mail or text messages, one Virginia voter received one from the address [email protected] that made the inflammatory claim: “Obama supports homosexuality and its radical social agenda. Say No to Obama on Nov 6!”
And apparently, the event was so manufactured that they allowed supporters to use the donations which were bought by the campaign, to donate back to the campaign. According to Coppins:
Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”
The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.
Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”
And elsewhere in Ohio, the origins of those “Voter Fraud is a Felony!” billboards have been found. It’s Stephen Einhorn, a Wisconsin venture capital fund manager and major GOP donor:
Earlier this month, dozens of billboards appeared in predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods in Cleveland and elsewhere warning that “VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY!” and can lead to prison sentences of up to three and a half years. In no small part because voters are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, the billboards were widely viewed as an effort to intimidate minority voters who are uncertain about their rights from voting. Clear Channel Outdoor, which owns the billboards that displayed the intimidating message, eventually agreed to remove the message and donate space on 10 billboards to display a counter-message clarifying that “VOTING IS A RIGHT. NOT A CRIME!”
With the election for President, Senators, Congresscritters, Dog Catchers, etc. coming up in about a week, it’s time for the Daily Sausage to engage in the time honored tradition of political handwringing known as “endorsing a candidate”.
I’m clearly not going to endorse Mitt Romney, but to be perfectly honest I’m not thrilled with President Obama either. So, let’s get arguments from both sides: Not Mitt Romney, and For President Obama.
First up, Not Mitt Romney.
From The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf:
There is no point in voting for a Republican who has neither respect for the Constitution nor a credible plan to close the budget deficit nor foreign policy experience nor sound judgment on the prudence of past wars nor any appreciation of the threat imperial overreach poses to a republic. For right-leaning libertarians and fiscal conservatives, a vote for Romney is a signal to the Republican Party that you’ll support whoever they nominate, no matter how implausible it is that your favored cause will benefit. For any Republican dissatisfied by the Bush Administration’s foreign policy, a vote for Romney is a signal to the Republican Party that there’s no cost to putting the same discredited neoconservative ideologues back in positions of power.
That’s a mighty fine argument. Well done, Young Conor.
And now for New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait:
And so the reality remains that a vote for Romney is a vote for his party — a party that, by almost universal acclimation, utterly failed when last entrusted with governing. Romney may be brainier, more competent, and more mentally nimble than George W. Bush. But his party has, unbelievably, grown far more extreme in the years since Bush departed. Unbelievable though it may sound to those outside the conservative movement, conservative introspection into the Bush years has yielded the conclusion that the party erred only in its excessive compassion — it permitted too much social spending and, perhaps, cut taxes too much on the poor. Barely any points of contact remain between party doctrine and the consensus views of economists and other experts. The party has almost no capacity to respond to the conditions and problems that actually exist in the world.
Yipes. Good thing Obamacare covers ointments, because that’s a really sick burn.
Now let’s turn to the other side, For President Obama.
First up, Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce:
Barack Obama owes more than I’d like him to owe to the Wall Street crowd. He probably at this point owes a little more than I’d like him to owe to the military. The rest he owes to the millions of people who elected him in 2008 — especially to those people whose enthusiasm I neither shared nor really understood — and he will owe them even more if they come out and pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him this time around. He may sell them out — and, yes, I understand if you wanted to add “again” to that statement — but they are not likely to revenge themselves against the country if he does and, even if they decided to, they don’t have the power to do much but yell at the right buildings.
On the other hand, Willard Romney owes even more to the Wall Street crowd, and he owes even more to the military, but he also owes everything he is politically to the snake-handlers and the Bible-bangers, to the Creationist morons and to the people who stalk doctors and glue their heads to the clinic doors, to the reckless plutocrats and to the vote-suppressors, to the Randian fantasts and libertarian fakers, to the closeted and not-so-closeted racists who have been so empowered by the party that has given them a home, to the enemies of science and to the enemies of reason, to the devil’s bargain of obvious tactical deceit and to the devil’s honoraria of dark, anonymous money, and, ultimately, to those shadowy places in himself wherein Romney sold out who he might actually be to his overweening ambition. It is a fearsome bill to come due for any man, let alone one as mendaciously malleable as the Republican nominee. Obama owes the disgruntled. Romney owes the crazy. And that makes all the difference.
Powerful and compelling.
And for our closing argument, New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait (again):
What can be said without equivocation is that Obama has proven himself morally, intellectually, temperamentally, and strategically. In my lifetime, or my parents’, he is easily the best president. On his own terms, and not merely as a contrast to an unacceptable alternative, he overwhelmingly deserves reelection.
While I may not entirely agree with the sentiment, I do agree with the general principle.
Barack Obama, over the last four years, has proven himself worthy of the Presidency morally, intellectually, temperamentally, and strategically. Mitt Romney, over the last eight years, has not. Obama may be in hock to Wall Street, but Wall Street owns Mitt Romney’s ass. Obama may have some crazy supporters, but I’m not worried that members of the far left are going to rush out and purchase an arsenal large enough to take over a small South American country if they lose.
Moreover, Mitt Romney is a Republican, and as I’ve noted throughout the first part of today’s Sausage, Republicans are terrible people. It doesn’t matter if you vote for Mitt and don’t vote for anyone else. A vote for Mitt is a vote for Paul Broun, Todd Akin, and Richard Mourdock. It’s a vote for Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. It’s a vote for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. It’s a vote for the Koch Brothers.
The Daily Sausage endorses Barack Obama (D) for re-election to the Presidency of the United States.
