Tag Archives: Rush Limbaugh

Grover Norquist Lost

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Obama won, Grover Norquist lost

2012 election results are in, and Obama won. President Obama should also win Florida. That means an electoral college tally of 332-206.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent at least $28 million against Democrats, lost.

 

Represented by Chamber of Commerce

American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which spent $1 billion against the president and against Democrats, lost.

Karl Rove lost. Grover Norquist lost. Donald Trump lost. Rudy Giuliani lost. Rush Limbaugh lost. Charles Krauthammer lost. George Will lost. Bill O’Reilly lost.

(Here from YouTube is Rove, on air, trying to dispute the outcome in Ohio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLV7nqD3CA)

The grotesques lost.

‘Winners’ and ‘losers’ are worse than useless as words. The winners-and-losers language cannot be trusted, anyway, as to validity. The commentators most eager to identify winners and losers self-identify as less eager to nail accuracy; a vulgar mindset characterizes notable non-wizards. I do not want to sound as though I were auditioning to become one of the sillies.

But clearly on election day 2012 some won, some lost.

 

The president

Won:

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden won re-election, and rightly so. They won the popular vote as well as the electoral college. For the first time since 1936, they won re-election with over 50 percent of the popular vote.

FDR

Several deserving Democratic senators won hard-fought re-election in an avalanche of negative advertising, including Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Bill Nelson in Florida, and Jon Tester in Montana.

 

Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts, Claire McCaskill won in Missouri, Tammy Baldwin won in Wisconsin, Heidi Heitkamp won in North Dakota, Mazie Hirono won in Hawaii. There are now twenty women in the United States Senate–a record. The senate is better off with such women Democrats.

Alan Grayson won as U.S. Rep in Florida, rightly so.

Tammy Duckworth won for the House in Illinois, in the process defeating the disgraceful Joe Walsh. The swing from awful to good is even bigger than the outcome.

 

Lost:

Lackluster corporate ally Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the author of the Ryan so-called budget, lost. (Rep. Ryan won re-election to the House.)

Rep. Allen West lost decisively in Florida. Way past due, but better late than never.

GOP Senate candidate George Allen lost in Virginia.

Rep. Joe Walsh lost in Illinois.

 

Big money lost.

The Koch brothers, who spent tens of millions on the election, lost.

Sheldon Adelson, who donated tens of millions first to Newt Gingrich and then to Mitt Romney, lost.

The Chamber of Commerce losses and the losses of Rove’s groups, the losses incurred by all the super-PACs massed on the pro-corporate, pro-tax haven, anti-union side of the aisle, are the biggest money losses. But it is worth mention again that wealthy self-funding candidates also lost. Linda McMahon lost in Connecticut; Steven Welch lost to incumbent Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania; most others lost in primaries. The national political press could have seen an augury for fall 2012 in the losses of so many self-funders.

Along with the billionaires and millionaires, corporate executives who stepped off the sidelines to bully the political process through their workplaces lost.

Speaking of losses, the long string of candidates who lost the race for the GOP nomination lost again. They did not help Republicans look better in the general election. Remember the parade–the string of fallen candidates from the GOP campaign trail—Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Tim  Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann. None can claim—although that won’t keep them from trying—that the election outcome enhances his individual credibility, or that they enhanced the party’s credibility.

Republicans lost. They lost the presidential race; they lost seats in the senate; they lost seats in the house; and they lost seats in the state legislatures. Only in governorships did the GOP eke out an advantage, and even there, with more to defend, Democrats kept or took five governorships including the hard-fought governorship of West Virginia.

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) lost.

House Republicans lost. They lost their two ugliest members, they lost some of their ‘base’, and once and for all the scorn of establishment Republicans for the anti-abortionists was clarified for all to see.

 

Won:

Democrats won. Not all state tallies are complete, but enough returns are in to clarify a nationwide pattern.

Democrats gained two seats in the senate, giving them the edge 53-45. Of two independents–Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maine’s Angus King–at least one will caucus with the Democrats. Given the quality of the new Democrats elected, that means the Democrats are stronger now than with the nominal ‘filibuster-proof’ sixty they had in 2009, relying on Joe Lieberman.

Democrats gained at least six seats in the house. In a notable upset, physician Raul Ruiz defeated GOP Rep. Mary Bono Mack in California. (Bono Mack’s husband, Connie Mack, also lost his senate race in Florida.) Dem Pete Gallego beat Quico Consego in south Texas. Lois Frankel beat Adam Hasner in South Florida. If Scott Peters has beaten Rep. Brian Bilbray in California, the gain is at least seven for Dems.

In the states, Dems gained the New Hampshire Executive Council. Democrats flipped at least eight state chambers from Repub to Dem in 2012, including chambers in Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New York and Oregon, losing only two. Early estimates are that Democrats picked up 200 seats in state legislatures, partly making up for the large losses of 2010. Local races parallel the federal and state patterns.

Lost:

Media grotesques lost.

Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh lost, as mentioned. George Will and Bill O’Reilly lost. Sarah Palin lost. Sean Hannity lost. Dick Morris lost.

The rightwing noise machine lost.

Fox News lost.

Rupert Murdoch lost.

The Wall Street Journal lost. The Chicago Tribune lost.

A host of auxiliary right-wing pundits installed by the newspaper I subscribe to, the Washington Post, lost. David Gergen lost. For that matter, most pundits lost. Dan Balz lost. The WashPost‘s layout editors–whoever composed the unfavorable headlines and picked the disfiguring photos of Obama–lost. George Stephanopoulos’ Round Table on ABC’s This Week lost. Face the Nation lost. Meet the Press lost. Chris Matthews lost.

Many or most of the pollsters–except for Nate Silver–lost.

 

The middle class won. Some degree of tolerance won. Health care won. Social Security won. American labor won. Reproductive rights won. The U.S. automobile industry won. Collective bargaining won. College students won. Mortgage holders won. Banking customers won.

Unfortunately, Paul Ryan won re-election to the House. So did Michele Bachmann. We can’t have everything. Bachmann’s race was tight, though. In theory that should end any discussion of Bachmann as some kind of powerhouse. Still, politically progressives won. Racism lost. Anti-immigrant campaigning lost decisively.

I am not gloating. This is a celebration of improvement, of steps toward a cleaner and healthier body politic. People like Joe Walsh and Allen West never did have any place in public office and should never have gotten a federal office in the first place. Anyone who held the opinion that the election was Mitt Romney’s to win was never qualified to be a political reporter in the first place. Any writer who thought ‘the economy’ an issue that would work in Romney’s favor is unqualified to appear in print. Corporate managers who spent more time throwing their weight around than they did improving their companies never should have been managers in the first place. Corporate management should never have been so pinned to stock price in an imaginary paper market as to neglect product, service and labor in the first place.

Political reporting, like every other kind of reporting, is supposed to shoot for accuracy. So read it here, all you buckaroos and buckaresses who spent a year and a half predicting a ‘close election’ and a ‘late election night’:

  • The presidential race was not close.
  • The battleground states were not razor-thin.
  • Democrats won. It was not fifty-fifty. It was not split-the-difference.
  • Republicans lost. The party has also lost name affiliation among registered voters.
  • Progressives won. Where Democrats lost, it was either a Blue Dog, a Republican-leaning district, or a hard race, sometimes close, where a challenger took on an entrenched incumbent. As mentioned, Alan Grayson won.
  • The right wing lost. As mentioned, Joe Walsh and Allen West lost. So did Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, although their brand of conservatism differs from the ugliness of Walsh and West.

 

more later

Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin

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Republican Party’s legitimate difficulty over Todd Akin: Re-cap and overview, part 1

 

Returning to the topic of Rep. Todd Akin’s senate race in Missouri, the real sticking point for Republican Party movers and shakers is not Akin’s mistaken science, his comforting notion that a woman’s body will ward off pregnancy in a sexual assault. The real sticking point, for top Republicans including presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is Akin’s genuine belief that abortion is wrong in all cases.

Todd Akin

(Certainly, Akin’s belief appears to be genuine, and short of proclaiming self a mind reader, it can be taken to be sincere.)

The fact that I do not agree with this view is beside the point. The point is that many voters and contributors on whom the upper levels of the GOP depend to keep office do agree with it. The official Republican Party platform adopted at the 2012 Republican National Convention–along with threatening to cut the mortgage interest deduction–holds with this view.

Those religiously conservative voters who hold this view are the people being stiffed by the national GOP, up to and including Romney.

So much for lip service. The Republican candidate for office who most strongly comes out with the anti-abortion party line in 2012–openly, candidly, unequivocally–happens, by some fluke, to be exactly the candidate that almost every well-placed Republican operative tries to exile beyond the pale. Akin’s remarks highlighted a view that many Republicans–especially those in Washington–do not hold. Worse yet, Akin’s remarks interfered with top Republicans’ ongoing strategy of keeping that view quiet.

Akin, Ryan

The adverse reaction to Akin’s remarks by wounded important people in the wounded top echelons of the GOP was swift, widespread and unequivocal.

Let no one be accused of exaggerating the reaction. Quick recap:

The day of Akin’s interview, then-presumptive nominee Mitt Romney promptly, if tersely, distanced himself from Akin’s comments.

The similarity between Akin’s no-exceptions position and that of Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, coming swiftly to light, the Romney campaign seems to have decided that just rejecting Akin’s views was not going to be enough. The next day, Romney came out to condemn Akin’s words as “inexcusable.”

The next day, he went farther yet, expressing a public hope that the Missouri congressman would leave the race.

Mitt Romney

Romney, be it noted, was not exactly going out on a limb here, separated from the rest of the party establishment. Other nominees suggesting that Akin should drop out include Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, strongly challenged by Elizabeth Warren. (Brown faces the key difficulty that Warren would make a better senator.)

Elizabeth Warren

 

Reportedly joining in against Akin was incomprehensibly well-paid radio host Rush Limbaugh, though Limbaugh back-pedaled afterward. As the deadline for Akin to drop out without penalty approached its last hours, establishment pressure on Akin mounted.

The August 21 deadline, as we know, came and went with Akin remaining in the race on the eve of the RNC. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) joined the throng asking him not to. There aren’t many occasions when  Issa can chastise someone for ill-considered speech, but he stepped up to the plate this time. Must have been something of a shock to some of Issa’s supporters back home.

Coming to the convention, Romney seized air time in interviews to reiterate his opposition to Akin.

 

Matalin on air

Top GOP operative Mary Matalin went even farther. As previously written, Matalin said emphatically on air that the Republican Party will fund a write-in candidate against Akin in Missouri, if Akin stays in the race. As of last writing, Akin has not dropped out, though Matalin has not yet retracted her statement.

 

Rove at Republican National Convention 2012

Matalin’s king-of-the-hill moment didn’t last long. Funding a candidate to run against Akin was tumbled off by Karl Rove’s expressed desire to murder him. In a gathering for wealthy supporters and party strategists, Rove’s fancy turned to homicide. He later apologized to Akin. Rove was at the convention. Akin was not.

 

So much for pro-life.

It is fair to take Akin’s remarks to be sincere. It would be fair to accept Rove’s remarks as sincere.

And this, gentlemen and ladies, is what the Christian right gets from the national Republican party: It is okay for rightwing pro-lifers to show up and vote; it is okay for them to contribute money in small amounts; it is okay for them to keep Wall Streeters in power. Position to get money, money to get position, all fueled by some vague notion of status.

But when one politician gets so out of line as to state openly the party’s no-exceptions position on abortion–makes clear that yes, that’s what the party stands for–the full weight of the party comes down on him.

The 2012 GOP primaries in the South–two today

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2012 southern primaries today

Gingrich in Alabama

The big political ticket today is two southern primaries, in Alabama and Mississippi—Hawaii and American Samoa have caucuses today, too, but that’s a different story, and anyway, the delegates from beautiful places at remote distances are mainly being commandeered by Mitt Romney.

A competent run-down on the probabilities here

 

All the discussion serves as a reminder of how many kinds of political analysis there are, even in the respectable spectrum of public discourse, and even aside from political differences among the analysts.

Questions on several levels:

The open-scandal question in Alabama and Mississippi is how well Newt Gingrich’s race-baiting, politely referred to as ‘dog whistle’ or code, will work for him—will it be enough to pull him ahead of Romney?

The more conventional question is simply who will win in each state primary, and by how much, leading to the delegates question.

The less plumbed question of delegate math is the big one–whether Gingrich and Rick Santorum will pull away enough votes from Romney to siphon off the delegate count significantly. Since each state has its own version of this cycle’s super delegates, softening the proportionality of proportional representation, that question is less easy to figure—even after the results. But the question bears on the GOP convention in Tampa. Any figure less than 1144, as we know, means that Romney will go to the convention without the nomination sewn up, theoretically. It’s a little hard at this point to imagine anyone else the nominee, especially if Romney goes in with around or near 1100 delegates beforehand, but on paper the nomination would still remain to be determined at the national convention.

Nice billboard for Tampa, when the time comes:

Romney in an earlier campaign

That would make it one of the more interesting GOP conventions in decades, since the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami—written up by Norman Mailer among others—or since the decades when Mississippi Republicans routinely sent two rival delegations to the national convention. The Lily Whites—that was their name for themselves, as was the Black and Tans for the rival delegates—always won.

 

Side note:

I continue to think that Romney is being put through the wringer way too hard over his harmless comments about grits. The commentators are making him look good by comparison, as do Gingrich and Santorum. These are ethical matters. It is ethically flawed to ignore an ethical problem, wrongdoing, when it occurs, such as the fact that the date of Jose Padilla’s arrest in Chicago is still classified information. Our U.S. Marshals could have told the public a lot about torture under the previous administration, if the GOP in Congress had not prevented it. After all, it’s the Marshals who transport prisoners, inmates and ‘detainees’ and who thus have occasion to observe their condition.

Conversely, though, it is also ethically flawed to elevate some little thing into an accusation of wrongdoing when it isn’t one. Eating the local food and saying nice things about it does not qualify as something to rake a candidate over the coals for.

It would be much more substantive to try to get the GOPers to address Wall Street bonuses and other executive compensation after the mortgage-derivatives debacle, or vote suppression, or speculating on oil futures, or the effect of fear-mongering and saber-rattling on the price of oil, or the fact that insurance premiums (rates) go up every year, etc., etc.

more later

[update]

Speaking of GOP Deep-South primaries and other Limbaugh fans–

Think Progress reports that at least 140 sponsors have pulled out of Limbaugh’s show. This from the corporate horse’s mouth itself.

[update]

It’s twilight on a beautiful spring day in the mid-Atlantic. Polls in Alabama and Mississippi will close in less than an hour. That Romney, Gingrich and Santorum have been polling close to each other messes up the narratives. Anyone who wants to talk in terms of ‘narrative’ has to offer a smorgasbord.

A few interesting items gleaned from the coverage, although not necessarily new:

  • Chris Matthews is claiming, as ever, that Mitt Romney is “a moderate”
  • Dan Balz of the Washington Post is intent, as ever, on the thesis that the November general election will be a nail-biter–Balz characterized the 2008 election as “almost ideal conditions” for Obama
  • CBS News is declaring flatly that Alabama and Mississippi are make-or-break for Newt Gingrich. CBS declares that Gingrich has to win there, or he will face immense pressure to drop out; no word about delegates awarded proportionately
  • little word on the major networks about vote suppression efforts
  • the phrase “brokered convention,” re Tampa, has been replaced, possibly temporarily, with the phrase “open convention”

Time will tell.

Polls closed–8:16 p.m.

According to CNN’s exit polls, Romney looks to win in Mississippi–he should, with all the ads–and Santorum in Alabama, where the Republican guv weighed in thoughtfully mentioning that Romney’s Mormonism might be a “subtle” factor there and elsewhere. CNN exit polls also give Romney the edge among large groups such as married women.

Much emphasis also on the president’s apparent drop in opinion polls among women, in the past month. Bound to happen with the cable channels and others touting birth control as a ‘woman’ issue. Birth control is not a women’s issue. It is a population issue, thus a matter of economy as well as of choice.

Back to the results–at least as suggested in exit polls–CNN and MSNBC are joining CBS in talking up big how Newt Gingrich should drop out if he doesn’t win tonight. So there’s your heavy pressure, right there. Presumably Fox News feels the same way. No mention of proportional delegates, mainly, in this context.

One would like to hope that it’s because Gingrich’s ‘southern strategy’ has embarrassed the media outlets. One would like to, but one can’t.

8:49 p.m.

Earliest exit polls trimmed back slightly, at least as regards Romney’s lead.

Could a virtual three-way tie be shaping up? Or will Newt Gingrich please a growing chorus of commentators and come in decisively third in both these Deep South states? No one is talking about Gingrich in Louisiana and Texas, right now.

9:32 p.m.

At the moment, things not going according to plan. With voices on all the channels speculating about how soon Newt Gingrich will/should drop out, Mitt Romney is the man stubbornly clinging to third place in both Mississippi and Alabama. It’s early days yet, and the three-way race in each state is by far too close to call, or even to make an educated guess about. But with 37 percent of the vote back in Mississippi and 6 percent in Alabama, which is moving returns much slower, Romney remains behind both Santorum and Gingrich.

Meanwhile, on CNN panelist Ari Fleischer, aka Mouth of Sauron–who helped us into the Iraq war as GWBush’s press secretary–is insisting that Newt Gingrich will in all probability drop out of the race in two days. That is, if Gingrich does not win tonight. Fleischer sets the bar pretty high for Gingrich. According to him, Gingrich has to carry both states to declare this evening a win, and anything else–he’s out. “You have to win.”

10:04 p.m.

The lineup the same in both Mississippi and Alabama, with 79 percent and 34 percent of the vote in, respectively–Santorum first, Gingrich second, Romney third. NBC has already called Alabama for Santorum, who leads by four or five percent rather than by one or two as in Mississippi. Mississippi is still designated too close to call.

Another guest on MSNBC joins the chorus of voices encouraging Gingrich to get out–former John McCain strategist Steve Schmidt, now extra well known after the HBO movie Game Change. With Gingrich clearly ahead of Romney (the front-runner) in both states, obviously the argument has changed. That is, the rationale for urging Gingrich to get out can no longer be that that’s the only way Romney can be beat.

So, as one might surmise, all those media voices urging other candidates to ‘coalesce’ around an anti-Romney candidate were never about finding the most genuine conservative.

Q.E.D.

10:57 p.m.

Santorum, speaking from Louisiana, blames Louisiana’s difficulties on Obama and on environmentalism. Typical faux populism, targeting rural voters again. Nothing from him about the dredging and drilling that have frayed the Gulf Coast, opening the way for devastation by hurricanes by removing every protection from nature. Nothing about the enormous tax give-aways for Big Oil, just another claim that environmental regulation–like keeping the Gulf of Mexico from becoming one big oil pool–is destroying jobs and raising gas prices. Nothing about speculation on oil futures, of course.

By such means, combined with record low turnout, he did win Mississippi as well as Alabama. Gingrich second in both, Romney third in both.

The contest was not between one moderate and two conservatives, with the two latter splitting the field.

The contest in Mississippi and Alabama was between the rural-area vote and the metro-area vote, with Gingrich and Romney splitting the latter. The latter is disproportionately small in both states.

No wonder Santorum is talking from Louisiana, about heading to Missouri. No wonder the most prominent media figures are feverishly boosting the GOP establishment tonight, calling on Gingrich to step aside before all the precincts are in. The vague argument seems to be that that gives Santorum a clear shot at Romney. I doubt it. As things look now, Santorum would get buried in a one-on-one progression even if he picked up Louisiana and Missouri. Our population centers contain most of our population. A pretty sad prospect of a race, looking to be even uglier without Gingrich than with him. But disappointingly, too many of the journalists, even, seem eager to forestall an open convention in Tampa.

Meanwhile, the three candidates still pretty much split the MS and AL delegates three ways, of course, with Romney to sew up some more in the island caucuses.

The 2012 GOP Southern Strategy–a Brokered Convention?

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2012 Gingrich’s Southern strategy and delegate count–GOP primaries

 

Gingriches in Alabama

The campaign to darken history continues, as the GOP primary season scrolls on to further proving grounds for Newt Gingrich’s (infamous) southern strategy. Alabama and Mississippi come March 13 and Louisiana March 24. The March calendar also includes March 10 caucuses in Kansas and the islands, the Missouri caucuses with 52 delegates at stake and the Illinois primary with 69, but Gingrich is not considered a threat (to other candidates) in those. The three old Deep South states offer 136 delegates, and Gingrich supporters give every sign of expecting to get at least some of them, counterbalancing the 240 or so on which Gingrich has no southern claim. Farther down the road come North Carolina on May 8 (55 delegates), Arkansas on May 22 (36), and the granddaddy of them all, Texas on May 29 (155).

Gingrich supporter Rick Tyler


In this context a Gingrich supporter, Rick Tyler, gave a thought-provoking elucidation last night on cable. Tyler, billed as a Gingrich attack dog, resigned from the Gingrich campaign when it imploded after the Gingriches’ Greek cruise and Tiffany bills in 2011, but is now senior adviser to the pro-Gingrich super PAC ‘Winning Our Future’. Tyler’s own views on race in the public discourse leave something to be desired, to put it nicely; he’s one of those So-are-you types at best. Most recently, with 40 or so advertisers pulling out of Rush Limbaugh’s show, Tyler has come out front and center with a big ad buy. At that, it might be a good buy. Few Gingrich voters are liable to be perturbed by Limbaugh’s comments. The price might even be down right about now; Limbaugh’s not saying.

But in spite of his peculiar views and the eccentricities of the Gingrich campaign—again putting it nicely–Tyler gave the clearest explanation yet of why Gingrich should stay in the race. Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word challenged Tyler with the assertion that Romney needs Gingrich to stay in the race, to keep Romney from being defeated by Rick Santorum one-on-one. Tyler countered, and this is where it gets interesting, that Santorum, rather than Romney, needs Gingrich to stay in.

From the transcript:

O’Donnell:

“And Super Tuesday failed to do what it usually does–convince at least one candidate to drop out of the race. Santorum needs Gingrich to drop out. Gingrich needs Santorum to drop out. Well, we`re going to have a Gingrich/Santorum showdown tonight in the spotlight.”

Introducing Tyler and Santorum supporter Eric Metaxas, O’Donnell opens with everyone’s question:

“Eric, the–Santorum is beating Gingrich consistently in these things. All you have to do is add Gingrich`s total to Santorum`s larger number and you have a wipe out of Mitt Romney in all these campaigns. What does Rick Santorum have to do to convince not Newt Gingrich, but other Republicans to rise up and say, come on, let’s narrow this race?”

Metaxas argues that Santorum is the one the Obama administration is really afraid of, and electable.

O’Donnell moves on to Tyler, again with everyone’s question:

“Well, Rick Tyler, the national polls don`t show that Mitt Romney has any particular advantage over Rick Santorum running against President Obama. And your guy is just falling behind, further and further behind. Why? Why, Rick?

Why prolong this? . . . You heard Steve Schmidt say that a vote for Gingrich is a vote for Romney. How can you let that happen?”

Tyler answers smartly, “Well, Steve Schmidt managed the John McCain campaign. So I`ll just leave it at that.”

Going on,

“But look, we put a lot of effort into Georgia because we felt like we had to win Georgia. We probably over-invested in Georgia, spent too much time and money there.

But it was OK. We had a decisive win. I`m out here in Mississippi and Alabama. That`s the next step. Let me–we heard a lot about calculations today. The calculation has actually changed somewhat. The calculation is that–put out by the Romney campaign, who has no ability to beat Barack Obama–in fact, David Axelrod did a conference call today laying out why he couldn`t beat Barack Obama, because Mitt Romney has used up his last half life, and he has just wiped out his support for the middle class and independent voters.

So he has just destroyed his ability to beat Barack Obama. And you pointed out in the first segment that more people showed up for Barack Obama than showed up for the Republicans. That`s because of the negative campaigning that`s been going on.”

Interesting observation from a Gingrich man. But moving on—

“But let me just put this calculation on the table. The hurdle for Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to catch up with Mitt Romney is only equaled by the hurdle of Mitt Romney to actually arrive at the convention with the proper number of delegates. The calculation has changed in this way, Rick–it is not in Rick Santorum`s interest for Newt Gingrich to drop out of this race.

It is in Rick Santorum`s interests, believe it or not, for Newt to stay in the race and to collect as many delegates, as Rick should do, to keep Mitt Romney from getting the requisite number of delegates to arrive in Tampa. And in that–doing that, after the first ballot, which Mitt Romney will fail to win, then Rick Santorum would have a genuine chance at winning an open floor fight. [emphasis added]

But he doesn`t have a chance otherwise, because he has no ability to beat Mitt Romney and his organization and his money.

O`DONNELL: Rick, I just have to follow up with that. Of course he has the ability to beat him. You look at Michigan. You look at Ohio. Romney bombed Santorum with money in Ohio. And if Newt Gingrich wasn`t in the race, Santorum would have beaten him decisively.

TYLER: Explain that theory to me in California. Explain that theory to me in New Jersey. Explain that theory to me in New York. That theory doesn`t hold up. Those are big states. And Mitt Romney will decisively beat Rick Santorum in those states, because he`s going to out-spend him.

He out-spent him in Ohio by almost four to one. The calculation is if you can keep Mitt Romney from out-spending you by three to one, you might win. But if he out-spends you by four to one, then you`re going to lose. And that was–that is what would happen to Rick Santorum.”

O`Donnell turns back to Metaxas:

“ . . . Eric, what Rick is essentially saying is OK, hey, everybody, let`s just keep playing. It seems pretty clear to us that even Romney isn`t going to get the delegates he needs in the election process to go into the convention with the nomination.

So we will all show up in Florida with our delegates, and then we can talk. And if Rick–and if Rick Santorum`s way ahead of Newt Gingrich, then maybe there`s some kind of deal to be made. Let`s just wait until Florida.

What`s wrong with that?”

Metaxas responds with the inevitable POV on Gingrich:

“Listen, I think they really believe that. So it`s hard for me to tell them not to do that. I don`t believe that. I think that–listen, a lot of the votes for Romney are very pragmatic votes. A lot of people don`t love Romney, but they would vote for him. I`m certainly one of them.

However, people love Santorum. . .

If I thought Gingrich could win, that`s one thing. But at this point, I don`t think he can. I guess the question is, when will he see that? The point is, it really doesn`t matter what we think. Gingrich has to believe that he can`t win. For some reason, he still believes.

I mean, he`s come back from the dead twice. I think he still believes he can do it. I simply don`t. I think Santorum is going to go a lot further.

The question is when will Gingrich see what everybody else is seeing? And I don`t know that he ever does that.”

O’Donnell goes back to Tyler:

“Rick Tyler, you seem to be saying that it isn`t about winning, that the Gingrich world has given up the idea that he can actually win the nomination through the election process. And you`re just in the business of getting delegates out of this proportional outcomes that you can get in various states, and just seeing how many you end up with when you go to Florida?”

Tyler:

“No, the key to winning is getting the most delegates to vote for you at the convention. That still remains operative. Look, Newt Gingrich is behind–60 delegates behind Rick Santorum. He could wipe out that difference in Mississippi and Alabama alone. There`s 150 delegates—”

“O`DONNELL: OK. But what if he doesn`t? Let`s just go to Mississippi, where you are right now, OK? And it`s Gingrich`s neighborhood. If Rick Santorum goes in to those southern states and beats Newt Gingrich, is there any message Newt Gingrich can get from that to say, you know what, I really am in the way; I should get out of the way so this can be the conservative against the moderate flip-flopper Romney?”

TYLER: Well, that would be up to Speaker Gingrich. As you know, I would support Speaker Gingrich if he wants to go to the convention. I would support whatever he wants to do. I believe we will win Alabama and Mississippi, and we`ll have a new ball game.

I also believe this is what Newt Gingrich has said from the very beginning, if, in fact, he believed that Romney or Rick Santorum could actually beat Obama and change Washington, which neither of their records reflect that they would be able to do that–they would both accommodate Washington–then he would step aside.”

“He doesn`t see that in either of those candidates. And so why not give the people in Rankin County, Mississippi, the chance to vote for–vote for another conservative?”

O`DONNELL: Well, according to that formulation then, he`ll never step aside, because every poll shows President Obama beating every one of these guys. Rick, come on. Come on. You can`t keep things going like this.”

TYLER: Polls change.”

 

Thus the 622 delegates from Old South states where Gingrich can theoretically win a majority, especially since he has openly staked a claim on the territory, could actually make a difference. Gingrich and Santorum, the argument goes, can siphon away enough delegates from Romney to prevent Romney’s reaching the magic number of 1144.

Craig Crawford with Helen Thomas

And then the GOP would be heading to a brokered convention—which is what well-regarded analyst Craig Crawford has been suggesting could happen.

And then, gentlemen and ladies, we would be finished with all this nonsense of a more open, more democratized process for the GOP, with the Republican nominee for president chosen directly by the voters, or at least by voters motivated enough to get out and vote. The trajectory from state conventions with their back-room deals to state primaries either too little or too much controlled by party insiders would finish with a national convention with, presumably, back-room deals. In that scenario, btw, Ron Paul delegates could make a difference.

It is fascinating to consider what kind of job offer, if any, might induce either Gingrich or Santorum to reconsider their 2012 strategy.

 

Side note, and it shouldn’t be a side note:

Looking at these numbers, one wonders whether there is any slightest chance that either Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum will speak against racial bigotry at any point in the 2012 primary season. Given the tepid response to Rush Limbaugh’s slanderous and defamatory comments about a young female law student, it seems unlikely at the moment. But there is always a moment for conscience to surface.

Birth control is an economy issue

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Since when is birth control not an economy issue?

 

Rick Santorum

‘The economy’ ‘versus’ ‘contraception’, contraception as a ‘social issue’, ‘social issues’ ‘versus’ ‘jobs’

—Why is the 2012 political campaign being represented this way?

On a planet inhabited by more than seven billion people, birth control is pro-life.

In a nation like the United States, where population decline does not number among pressing social problems, birth control is the economically viable way forward.

Prosperity and income distribution, after World War II

This is not new. The post-war generation knew it. The overwhelming majority of American families in the postwar baby boom—the families, the parents, who produced my generation—had two or three children. More than four was an exception. The ‘only child’ was an exception. The majority of GIs returning after the war, who married, bought houses, built the suburbs, went to college on the GI bill—or not—and spent decades on their jobs, the overwhelming majority of them—they produced an heir and a spare, as the Brits say of their royals. Or maybe two spares. Having gotten more than a glimpse of the carnage and destruction of World War II, they came home and reproduced themselves with maybe a little something left over. The average number of persons per household in the U.S. in 1964, according to the 1985 World Almanac and Book of Facts, was 3.3. This was before household size declined with rising separation and divorce, before a rise in one-parent households, etc. Where are Ozzie and Harriet when we really need them?

 

Ozzie and Harriet family

And that was during the BABY BOOM, famous for regenerating the U.S. economy partly by injecting into it—the goat entering the python—large new numbers of potential consumers as well as citizens. Baby boomers’ parents were able to accomplish what they did largely because they had birth control.

The generation of veterans of the Great Depression and World War II wanted and expected to live better than its parents and grandparents. They limited their childbearing, and they did it deliberately, with the social approval of their peers/population cohort. Betty Friedan notwithstanding, gone, after World War II, were the days when it was routine for a married couple to have a child every year to help on the farm, knowing that the number might be held down by infant and child mortality anyway. Gone were the days when it was routine for kids to quit school in second or third grade, or in sixth or seventh grade, to work on the farm. Gone were the days when the number of children in a family was limited only by the mother’s health, and when one wife died after numerous births, another took her place to produce more offspring with the grieving widower. The postwar generation that produced the Baby Boomers? The generation that gave birth to ours? –We may not be hearing much about it on the campaign trail right now, ladies and gentlemen, but they used BIRTH CONTROL.

 

1950s family in a 1950s ad

Proud of it, too. Birth control may not have been blazoned on billboards across the nation, but you can look at a raft of 1950s advertisements featuring what is represented as the typical family–and the overwhelming majority will picture either two or three children.

If there is a downside to this picture, it is NOT that using birth control roused intense social antipathies, at least not in any neighborhood I knew of. The downside included pharmaceutical companies’ reluctance to adhere to safety and health standards—‘regulation’–and familiar prejudices. People too dumb or too ignorant or too foreign were the ones who didn’t use birth control, was the perception, less often voiced than sensed. People who held human life cheap, as we used to hear. People who lived in such teeming hordes that it was not feasible for them to value human life as we do—this was sometimes the message—they were the ones who didn’t use birth control. In fact, not using it was part of their problem. They did not have access to the advances of Western medicine.

Including birth control (along with television, advertising, and new cars).

The parents I knew employed birth control willingly. It wasn’t talked about much–because it didn’t need to be talked about, let alone defended. I may have grown up in a politically polarized neighborhood, but never in my life did I hear anyone arguing about the use of birth control, ever. Never did I hear anyone in my parents’ generation have to defend using birth control. For one thing, it was nobody else’s business. It was your own business. For another, it was a good idea, and everyone knew it. Even before the days when reproductive treatment was the extent of most women’s health care, birth control was not by any means a left-right or conservative-liberal issue. Every father on my block, when I was growing up, was a proud father. Every one of them was home from World War II, and glad of it. (One dad got deathly ill after going into the Army, spent months convalescing from grave illness in a military hospital, and was sent home honorably discharged.) Not one of these dads went all-out to have as many kids as possible. Not one. It is remarkable that the anti-contraception rhetoric of Rick Santorum and of gag-a-goat Rush Limbaugh is being presented exclusively as a woman’s issue.–To a man, the fathers that I remember from my growing up years wanted the number of kids they could support—and by the way, supporting and bringing up children included at least hoping to send them to college some day. Sending your kids to college, like the freedom to use birth control if you chose, the freedom to move where you chose, the right to be paid for your work, and the ability to buy a house if you saved, was a sign of advancement. They might have given up college for themselves, entering World War II, and without much discussion of the sacrifice, but they did not necessarily intend for their offspring to forgo college.

The Baby Boom generation, be it noted, is the generation of Rush Limbaugh* and Rick Santorum. The unparalleled prosperity produced by Baby Boomers’ parents, using birth control among other sensible material practices, also spawned the mega-millions in media, lobbying and acquisitions that have so richly rewarded Limbaugh, Santorum, and Mitt Romney.

This entire population trend—widespread use of birth control, smaller families, skyrocketing prosperity in peacetime, and an unparalleled expansion of the U.S. economy from 1943 to 1973—was also part of the large over-all transition of America from an agrarian nation to a fully industrialized one. The grandparents of Baby Boomers had more children than did the parents of Baby Boomers. The parents of Baby Boomers often had more children than did their offspring. Each of my four grandparents came from a family of from nine to twelve offspring. My two parents came from families of four and five. My parents had two. I do not recall one instance, not one, of either older generation urging the younger generation to have more children. Not one. Having fewer mouths to feed was an economic advantage. Not only was this common sense such a commonplace as not to need expression, the topic arose, if it arose in discussion at all, mainly in connection with people who did not use family planning. Nobody wanted to live like the Joads.

Where does the GOP get these lunatics?

 

The anti-birth-control party

But don’t take my word, or recollection, for the above.

Use reason. Friends on the right, ask yourselves the following questions: Did my parents have two or three children? If so, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did my parents have fewer than five or six children? If so, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did my aunts and uncles have fewer than five or six children? If so, in all likelihood, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. Did other parents in the neighborhood have two or three children? If so, in all likelihood, THEY USED BIRTH CONTROL. As Keith Olbermann pointed out last night, the (newest) ugliness of Rush Limbaugh on this matter attacks the women in his own family. Rick Santorum may have come from a different family structure than Limbaugh’s, but even so, for Santorum to look out over an audience of supporters, most of whom have fewer children than his seven, and criticize the use of contraception as libertinism, is incomprehensible. And no, Santorum is not attacking immorality; he’s attacking birth control. If he wanted to inveigh against premarital sex, he could do so. Instead, he goes after contraception.

Use conscience. In a world periodically wracked by famine, epidemic and wars, playing one’s part in holding down population growth is considered socially responsible. It was considered socially responsible even in the post-war years, when global population was much less than now, when the population of the United States was around 180 million, and when veterans were inclined to replace a population depleted by world war.

Use evidence. Baby Boomers, like their parents, have historically believed in birth control. An interesting datum from my yellowing Information Please Almanac, 1980, appears under the heading “Family Planning”:

“A recent survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that about 4 in 10 married couples have sterilizations within five years after the birth of their last wanted child. Sterilization prevents about 270,000 unwanted births per year.” (806)

This statistic presumably does not include families for whom the family doctor tactfully or accidentally circumscribed future pregnancies. Where is Marcus Welby when we really need him? Enough said.

 

Marcus Welby, T.V. family doctor

For the same year, the same source indicates that the overwhelming majority of U.S. families were two-person, three-person, or four-person—38 percent of all families were two-person families, 22 percent were three-person, and 20 percent were four-person. In other words, 80 percent of all U.S. families in 1980 had four persons or fewer. Only three-tenths of one percent of U.S. families included more than seven persons.

 

*Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) is encouraging a boycott of Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors. Second the motion.

Limbaugh sponsors listed on Facebook include Quicken Loan, Century 21, and Legal Zoom.

Also–Clear Channel, which brings us Limbaugh’s voice, is mostly owned by Bain Capital. No wonder Mitt Romney backed down from his initial responsible, respectful, sensible comment on birth control and the losing Blunt amendment.

How are they going to avoid making in-kind political contributions, when the general election approaches?

Note to Ed Shultz: PLEASE acknowledge that you also said ‘shakedown’

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Note to Ed Shultz: PLEASE acknowledge that you also said ‘shakedown’

This is getting slightly depressing. I am all for castigating Joe Barton, his oil donations, and the harmful policies he almost always espouses. But I’ve been listening–for the past few minutes–to Ed Schultz castigate Barton for calling the BP $20 billion escrow fund a ‘shakedown’. Regrettably, Schultz went on about Barton for several minutes without mentioning up front that he did the same (previous post).

Also regrettably, rightwing bloggers are picking this one up: See links here and here and here, for example.

To be fair, Schultz has previously defended his word choice, in a panel discussion elsewhere. But the buzzword is out there,and he seems to have helped legitimize it. This is no time to pretend that he didn’t say it, or to expect liberal audiences to suck it up and pretend the same.

The video clip of Schultz praising Obama for shaking down BP is linked here. MSNBC needs to do some homework here. Chris Matthews, on Nerfball, did a version of the same thing–going off about BP and Joe Barton, truly and applicably enough, without taking into account the cable-and-radio cross-transmissions that influenced this dialogue.

No wonder Rush Limbaugh is further demonstrating his eerie lack of shame by repeating and defending the ‘shakedown’ reference.