Republican Debate Live Blog

Can you spot the crazy one?*

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Republican Debate 2011: Reagan Library hosts GOP Presidential Candidates

The Republican Candidates Debate at the Reagan Library happens tonight at 8pm. Eight Presidential candidates will square off in a debate co-moderated by John F. Harris of POLITICO and Brian Williams of NBC News.

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Grab a drink and some popcorn and watch the vipers fang each other.

BTW – My first thought when I saw that picture was “Holy shit, Michele Bachmann is SHORT!”

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(* Trick question – they’re all crazy, just some of them are crazier than others)

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Quote of the Year

"I did it with one hand tied behind my back"

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Eleanor Clift:

Overall, though, labor is not happy with Obama. “Most workers voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries,” says a labor organizer who did not want to be quoted seeming to disparage the president. “Everywhere there were blue-collar workers, she cleaned his clock.”

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¿Cómo chinges “prebuttal?”

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The smell of Democratic flopsweat is getting really bad:

Democratic National Committee “prebuttal” to GOP presidential debate paints rivals as Tea Party extremists

The Republican 2012 presidential contenders debate Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. and the Democratic National Committee, in a pre-emptive strike, slammed the rivals for their Tea Party alliances.

In a report released on Wednesday morning, the DNC said Tea Party proposals–a balanced budget amendment, supermajorities to raise revenues and caps on spending–would result in massive job loss and hurt the middle class.

The emphasis on jobs comes as the debate takes place the night before President Obama unveils his newest jobs plan before a joint session of Congress. Obama rolls out his proposals with the jobless rate stuck at about 9 percent and zero job growth last month.

The Wednesday match-up, sponsored by NBC News and Politico, is the first debate for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and sparks may fly between him and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney–who Perry quickly displaced as the front-runner once he jumped in the race.

Democrats have stepped up their efforts to link Republicans to the Tea Party–a movement that has grown increasingly influential in GOP politics.

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse and former Obama White House press secretary Robert Gibbs are flying to California today to be in the “spin room” at the Reagan Library to rebut and comment on the debate. Democratic activist Maria Echaveste based in Berkeley, Calif. may join them on site as part of the team and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa may make media rounds via remote TV hookups.

I’ve been watching politics for about four decades now, and I don’t remember EVER seeing one party do a “prebuttal” to an intra-party debate by the other side, FOURTEEN months before the election.

Normally at this point you’re lucky if you can get your own party to pay attention to your candidates.

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Do your ears hang low?

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Dumbo has nothing on this dog. This is an open thread.

GOP Debate live-blog starts in three hours (+ or -)

(h/t I Own the World)

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That’s not “asking questions”

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According to Politicususa and Death and Taxes, three people were arrested at a Paul Ryan townhall for merely “asking questions.”

When turning his town halls into PPV events didn’t keep the protesters away, Rep. Ryan did the next best thing. He kicked them out, and in some cases, they were arrested. These people paid money to ask Paul Ryan a question, but when the Congressman didn’t like their questions, he had them kicked out.

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Watch the video and see what you think.

This is the new-new civility.

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Silence is racist or something

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Satire is dead:

Pelosi Peeved Republicans Opt Out of Rebuttal to Obama Speech

Republicans have decided they’re not going to give a rebuttal to President Obama’s jobs speech later this week, a decision House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi took as a high affront to the White House.

At least three GOP lawmakers also have announced they’re not going to show up for the presidential address. House Speaker John Boehner’s office then confirmed Tuesday evening that nobody from the party would deliver an official televised response.

Pelosi said the party’s “silence” would “speak volumes about their lack of commitment to creating jobs.”

“The Republicans’ refusal to respond to the president’s proposal on jobs is not only disrespectful to him, but to the American people,” Pelosi said.

But Boehner spokesman Mike Steel said Obama’s proposals on Thursday “will rise or fall on their own merits,” suggesting a GOP response was not needed.

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How do you mock something like that?

UPDATE:

Could the decision not to offer a rebuttal have something to do with kick-off time? I’ll bet the Republicans figured Obama would try to time his speech to leave them no time to speak prior to the Saints-Packers game.

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(Via Hot Air)

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The New Daily Howler

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The Incomparable Bob Somerby has moved to a new location. For those of you that have been in a coma for the past decade and a half, Bob pretty much invented political blogging. He’s been at it since 1998 – that’s THIRTEEN years. That’s a long time to be a lone voice, crying from the wilderness.

He used to be pretty popular with progressives until he started holding them to the same high standards they criticized the right wingers for lacking. I consider him to be required reading (there will be a test later)

His old site is still there with all his archives. For your convenience both places are listed on our blogroll.

The best part – on his new site you can make comments to his posts!

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This is what happens when you pal around with Bill Maher

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Huffpoop:

Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham Trash Sarah Palin

Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham took a series of brutal swipes at Sarah Palin on Tuesday’s “O’Reilly Factor.”

Ingraham was filling in for Bill O’Reilly, and she and Coulter agreed that Palin has outstayed her welcome.

“She’s become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party,” Coulter said. “She’s just ‘The One’ to a certain segment of right wingers. And the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this. No conservative on TV will criticize Palin, because they don’t want to deal with the hate mail.”

Ingraham said that Palin is too thin on policy to be a credible presidential candidate. She said people were “desperate” for “real substance” and that Palin doesn’t seem “all that interested in digging really, really deep on that stuff.”

Coulter said that Palin’s die-hard fans were becoming a real problem.

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Do you get the feeling the GOP establishment is getting nervous?

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(h/t Legal Insurrection)

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Mierda de toro

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Jeff Zelany:

A Campaign Challenge: Defining Obama

President Obama may have escaped the burden of a Democratic primary challenger. Yet the battle to define him is rapidly escalating — not only by Republicans competing to run against him, but also within his own team inside the White House.

A Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, followed by the president’s economic address to Congress on Thursday, offers a window into the dueling efforts to provide voters a view of Mr. Obama and his record at a time when polling shows that he is increasingly vulnerable politically and that Americans feel the country is careering down the wrong track.

The White House is in the midst of rebranding the president as a pragmatic problem solver prepared to set aside ideology to address a compelling need (see last week’s concession on ozone regulations), a reasonable man in an era dominated by extreme views. But they also emphasize that he is willing to draw distinctions with conservatives, reflecting a central tension that has defined him as a candidate and as president: that in trying to lay claim to a broad swath of the electorate, as he succeeded in doing in 2008, he risks pleasing neither the center nor the left, the story of much of his time in office.

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The media sure loves their narratives, don’t they? In their view the 2008 election was all about Obama. In reality it was all about Bush.

In 2007 and 2008, George W. Bush’s approval rating was in the twenties. In 2006 the electorate handed Congress to the Democrats, not because they enamored with donkeys but because they were disgusted with elephants. The only real question was not would the Democrats win but which Democrat would win.

Enter Barack Obama – the epitome of an empty suit. With the help of the Democratic establishment, the media, and half a billion dollars in donations from Wall Street and other fat cat special interests, Obama stole the nomination from the Democratic party voters.

The voters picked Hillary – they got Obama instead.

Then, even with a huge money advantage and the media cheerleading for him, Obama still nearly lost. If the GOP base had turned out to support McCain the way they supported Bush then Obama would have lost.

During both the primaries and the general election Obama was successful at one thing – he successfully avoided defining himself. “Hopenchange” is not a policy or a political ideology, it is just a slogan.

In 2008 Obama didn’t have a record to run on. Now he has a record he’s trying to run away from.

“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” – Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

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Unintentionally revealing

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Richard Cohen discovers that Obama is so last year:

It’s no longer Obama-land in the Hamptons

Barack Obama has lost the Hamptons.

That sentence is a fat target for ridicule, I know, since the Hamptons are often reviled as the playground of the ridiculously rich and the promiscuously silly — hardly the working-class Democratic base. As is usually the case, there’s some truth to the stereotype, but enough exceptions to that rule to make the White House pay attention. The Hamptons is where the Democratic energy, money and intellectual firepower of Manhattan goes for R&R. It’s just not another beach.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them — that’s none — was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.

Let me call the roll. I am talking about are writers and editors, lawyers and shrinks, Wall Street tycoons and freelance photographers, hedge funders and academics, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Democratic activists. They were all politically sophisticated, and just a year ago some of them were still vociferous Obama supporters. No more.

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No real surprise there, lots of people are realizing what we figured out over three years ago – Obama is New Coke.

That column, however, is unintentionally revealing. As anyone who watches Royal Pains can tell you, the Hamptons is like Martha’s Vineyard, Aspen, and Palm Springs – they are playgrounds for the rich and shameless.

Any “run-of-the-mill Democrats” you see there will be waiting tables and cleaning rooms, not rubbing elbows with millionaires.

Manhattan is not the center of the universe, it is the center of snooty elitism. “Politically sophisticated Obama supporter” is an oxymoron, with emphasis on the “moron.”

Cohen is a Village idiot, and this column shows you how detached from the real world the media is.

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Verily, for He shall cut thy taxes and give thee pork

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Need more proof that Obama is Bush III?:

Old Tax Relief Seen as Anchor in Obama Plan

The centerpiece of the job creation package that President Obama plans to announce on Thursday — payroll tax relief for workers and perhaps their employers — is neither his first policy choice nor that of many economists. But it is the one that they figure has the best chance of getting Republicans’ support.

Mr. Obama has signaled that he will propose to extend for another year a reduction of two percentage points in the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax that employees pay, which means about $1,000 more for the average household. And he is considering a proposal to expand the tax relief to employers’ share.

In his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama is expected to call for a package totaling several hundred billion dollars that would also extend other business tax cuts, put federal dollars into building and repairing roads, rails, airports, schools and other infrastructure projects, and provide aid to states to avert more layoffs of teachers.

But the single biggest stimulus measure he will propose is likely to be temporary payroll tax relief. If the current tax cut, due to expire at the end of the year, is expanded next year to employers as well as employees, it would pump roughly $200 billion into the economy, with the aim of stimulating much-needed demand for goods and services from consumers and businesses and, additionally, of giving companies an incentive to hire.

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Extending tax cuts? If they aren’t working now, how will they make anything better in the future? And since the old tax cuts didn’t work, let’s try some new ones!

Prediction: Another epic failure

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We were prematurely correct

"I get no respect, I tell ya"

Hugh at Corrente:

There comes a time when people realize that whoever else Obama might be he’s not the guy to fix their and the nation’s problems. A realization like that is equivalent to a sentence of death politically. There is just no coming back from something like that. In my opinion, the Obama strategy has always depended upon his being the less horrid candidate, the lesser of the two evils, although plenty evil in his own right. However when this kind of revulsion of a President sets in, the dynamic changes from “Obama is better than the alternative” to “Any alternative except Obama.”

What interests me is how this critical trend came to be. I think it goes back, not to be immodest, to us. A few of us refused to be veal penned and turned into progressive Trojan horses, spouting progressive slogans but essentially signing off on Obama’s Bush-esque Presidency. We resisted. We were derided and treated as fringe, not just by the Democratic party, but by the liberal orgs and elite blogs. We were being unrealistic. They were the ones who knew what they were doing. Obama was a guy with whom they could do business and whom they could influence. We created a counter-narrative to this: Obama as conservative. Their explanations of Obama’s actions lacked any coherence. They were continually surprised and at a loss. Ours was not only explanatory but predictive. They had the numbers and resources. All we had was reality and a willingness to speak it.

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We tried to warn people about Obama. We pointed out his lack of experience, the huge gap between the advertised product and the actual candidate, his conservative tendencies and his divisive tactics. The only thing we were wrong about was he was even worse than we predicted.

For our troubles we were treated as pariahs, shunned and called names.

So now that the rest of Left Blogistan is waking up with a Koolaid hangover, are they contrite and apologetic? Are they belatedly showing us the respect we deserve?

Hell no!

Cassandra never got any respect either.

And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. – Matthew 13:57

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(h/t Vastleft)

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I’d rather get a Brazilian wax from Rosa Klebb

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Matt Taibbi:

I was in an airport in Florida yesterday and was forced into a terrible, Sophie’s Choice-type choice.

I was hours early for a flight and stuck in a relatively small terminal crammed with people. Only one area in the whole wing had empty seats; an unused gate that contained a TV blaring the CNN broadcast of Obama’s Labor Day speech at full volume.

So it was either sit underneath a full-volume broadcast of our fearless president bellowing out his latest hollow promises, or the hellish alternative: retreat to gates full of screaming five year-old children, all of them jacked up on sugar and bawling their eyes out because it was the end of Labor Day weekend and their cruel parents were dragging them home from Disneyworld.

I ended up choosing the screaming children. The one open seat in a nearby gate was next to an extended family of Indian tourists. A four year-old boy from that group wearing a cape and brandishing a plastic light saber thought it was funny when he kept saber-swiping at my knees. But sitting through that was better than having to listen to Obama drape himself in Harry Trumanisms and talk about “shared prosperity.”

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How far would you go to avoid listening to Obama read a speech?

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