Rachel Maddow talks to Eugene Robinson about whether the Republicans rank hypocrisy on claiming they want bipartisanship while being the party of no, co-sponsoring bills that they later vote against and claiming credit for the good legislation they voted against is ever going to make them embarrassed enough about their actions to get them to stop. As Rachel notes if they are going to continue this, they should not be taken seriously because they do not care about policy. They care about playing politics.
As John noted, even the American public is getting tired of the filibuster if they have the concept explained to them since so much of the public doesn't know what the word means. Whether they ever pay a price at the polls is another matter. I don't know why the Democrats haven't adopted the same language the Republicans used when they were in the same boat -- "up or down vote". The public understands that and it gives the largely lazy press a sound byte to play instead of them being allowed to act like needing sixty votes to get anything passed in the Senate is normal, Rachel being one of the few exceptions.
It's interesting watching the Villagers try to figure out what the teabaggers are, both on TV and in print, because they refuse to either admit the truth or are afraid to voice their true feelings.
An interesting online poll is going on right now on the Fox News website. What it shows is quite interesting to me, since Fox News created the Tea Party movement in order to undermine President Obama and his agenda. At this point almost 200K people have voted and the results surprised me because it seems they don't need much psycho-babble talk to figure out what is quite evident to anyone who is not afraid to voice an honest opinion about them.
How to define the Tea Party movement was nearly as big an issue last week at the National Tea Party Convention as the political issues discussed, from government fiscal responsibility to greater accountability of public officials. Some participants drew cheers for raising more controversial topics, such as President Obama's nationality, but others argued that those points were, at best, politically unproductive. Meghan McCain went further on Monday and called segments of the movement "racist."
--- And the survey says:
Fruitless mix of racism, conspiracy theories 79% (156,751 votes)
With Tom Tancredo and WND's Joseph Farah, nativist right wingers at their core having major speaking rolls in the Tea Party Convention before Palin took the stage last weekend, it looks like it cemented their opinions. I know it's an online poll, but when these appear on the Fox website they usually are skewered to the hard right. Well, even the conservative audience that Ailes caters to isn't fooled by the punditocracy.
Maybe David Broder should have waited until his own newspaper divulged their newest poll results before writing a slobbering column about Sarah Palin. Because wouldn't ya know, she's taken a huge dive in the polls.
I wrote a while ago that going off on her book tour would give her a nice bounce in the polls, but while the money was great, the hype would wear off long before 2012 came rolling along, and she's not going to be able to tour the country with as much positive media coverage as she did this time around.
Although Palin is a tea party favorite, her potential as a presidential hopeful takes a severe hit in the survey. Fifty-five percent of Americans have unfavorable views of her, while the percentage holding favorable views has dipped to 37, a new low in Post-ABC polling.
There is a growing sense that the former Alaska governor is not qualified to serve as president, with more than seven in 10 Americans now saying she is unqualified, up from 60 percent in a November survey. Even among Republicans, a majority now say Palin lacks the qualifications necessary for the White House.
Palin has lost ground among conservative Republicans, who would be crucial to her hopes if she seeks the party's presidential nomination in 2012. Forty-five percent of conservatives now consider her as qualified for the presidency, down sharply from 66 percent who said so last fall.
Among all Republicans polled, 37 percent now hold a "strongly favorable" opinion of Palin, about half the level recorded when she burst onto the national stage in 2008 as Sen. John McCain's running mate.
Among Democrats and independents, assessments of Palin also have eroded. Six percent of Democrats now consider her qualified for the presidency, a drop from 22 percent in November; the percentage of independents who think she is qualified fell to 29 percent from 37 percent.
And to all those who are enthralled with the mystical independent voters, she's dropped eight points. It's still very early, but these plummeting poll numbers shouldn't be ignored.
Since the book tour, she's become a Fox News analyst, appeared with on all the Fox shows, including with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and was the highly paid main speaker at Tea Party National Convention. I guess it doesn't take a scandal or a major gaffe to sink this quickly after all. Or maybe Americans are getting saturated with Palin and she's losing her "populist edge."
I don't think she should be taken lightly myself, but I found these numbers quite surprising. I expected the bump she got from the book tour would last a bit longer. Joe Klein makes a good point when he says:
The speech was inspired drivel, a series of distortions and oversimplifications, totally bereft of nourishing policy proposals — the sort of thing calculated, carefully calculated, to drive lamestream media types like me frothing to their keyboards. Palin is a big fat target, eminently available for derision. But I will not deride. Because brilliance must be respected, especially when it involves marketing in an era when image almost always passes for substance. (See the top 10 unfortunate political one-liners.)
I don't agree with his use of the word "brilliance," but in the era of 24/7 cable TV, Fox News and Frank Luntz, marketing is a huge weapon. I have no doubt that she will improve as time goes by, but if America isn't buying her act at this point, I'm not sure they ever will.
Many Democrats are operating under the assumption that Democrat Martha Coakley will lose today's election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. In the debate over how Democrats could possibly lose the race--which has major repercussions for President Obama's agenda--Coakley herself is taking more and more of the blame. Some Democrats and liberals aren't waiting for the polls to close to turn against Coakley and her campaign. Here's a taste of what they're saying...read on
Democrats believe President Barack Obama’s proposed, $90 billion tax on big banks will box in Republicans, giving them the choice between siding with the bankers or breaking with the GOP’s antitax base.
If so, Republican Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown has taken the bait. His Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, embraced the bank tax and spent the day goading Brown to take a stand.
“Now is the time for Scott Brown to tell us what side he’s on, and who he wants to fight for. Despite his tea party rhetoric about never supporting a tax hike, the truth is that he has supported more than $300 million in new taxes and fees on middle class families. We’ll find out if his “no tax” pledge only applies to the privileged,” she said in a statement.
Responding to The Wall Street Journal, the Brown campaign said this evening, “Scott Brown is opposed to higher taxes, especially in the midst of a severe recession. Raising taxes will kill jobs. Martha Coakley’s tax-raising policies will make it harder to get our economy back on the right track.”
The Massachusetts race has been closely watched because it is far closer than expected. The special election will be held Tuesday to fill the Senate seat that had been held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
Nate Silver picks up an interesting point: Much of the opposition to healthcare reform comes from the left - about 25%. We need to keep pushing on the final bill, because if there's one thing politicians understand and fear, it's bad poll numbers:
Ipsos/McClatchy put out a health care poll two weeks ago. The topline results were nothing special: 34 percent favored "the health care reform proposals presently being discussed", versus 46 percent opposed, and 20 percent undecided. The negative-12 net score is roughly in line with the average of other polls, although the Ipsos poll shows a higher number of undecideds than most others.
Ipsos, however, did something that no other pollster has done. They asked the people who opposed the bill why they opposed it: because they are opposed to health care reform and thought the bill went too far? Or because they support health care reform but thought the bill didn't go far enough?
It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan -- or about 12 of the overall sample -- did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough.
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From Morning Joe, Nov. 24, 2009, Joe Scarborough and Mark Halperin think Obama's poll numbers have dropped because he's too polarizing. Of course by "polarizing" they mean pretending that he's governed from the left, which he hasn't. They go on to compare him to Palin and say he's only playing to his base like she is. What's up is down and down is up...and round and round we go with these two. Obama's numbers are down because he's ignoring his base and not following through on his campaign promises, not because he’s run too far to the left.
Obama officials went on the offensive on the talk show circuit last Sunday, reminding America and the corporate media that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization.
Staying true to their entertainment format, on Monday Fox News responded by putting up a poll on their website and what do you know...all of the choices are incorrect and none of them allow for the possibility that Obama is right.
What a knee-slapper! Feel free to re-write your own reality-based poll for them in the comments.
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I generally don't watch Fox News; it's bad for my blood pressure and health. Further, my husband got tired of me looking for something to throw at the TV. So I leave the Fox viewings to other members of the team. But I happened to be flipping channels and caught this exchange on The O'Reilly Factor and it had me reeling from the Wonderland topsy-turvy nature of it. Dave already discussed this clip a little.) In contemplating Rush Limbaugh being dropped from the group looking to purchase the St. Louis Rams. Juan Williams, for whom no conservative can do wrong, predictably defends Limbaugh, saying that all of Rush's statements do not constitute racism, but comedy. Seriously.
The Washington Timesreports on the entire back-and-forth that continues this afternoon. While discussing “Barack The Magic Negro” song that Rush Limbaugh played, Williams and Ballentine, both African American, disagreed on whether that was “racial”.
Just before the end of the segment, Ballentine said, “You can go back to the porch, Juan. You can go back. It’s ok.”
He was almost gleeful while bragging about it on Twitter: “ok howd i do u hear me tell jaun back to the porch lmao” he wrote, among several other comments. Today, he wrote, “You gotta love how now Iam the racist LMAO gotta love the washington post and the GOP.”
The Times also has a clip of his web radio show, and he wasn’t remorseful in any way:
Now if you want to take what I said about Juan Williams as racial, you go right ahead. All I said was he could go back to the porch. I didn’t call him a house negro. I said he could go back to the porch. Now if you took it as such, that means you took it as such.
I think we've gotten to a weird, non-reality-based place when two African-American men on Fox News Channel look at and/or trade racial slurs and then argue they're not racial.
The Obama administration is criticizing FOX News Channel for its coverage of the administration. If the disagreement between the Obama administration and FOX News Channel continues, who do you think will come out on top?
Administration 39%
Fox News 43%
Breaking: Fox finds more think Fox will defeat the White House! I wonder if this will persuade the White House communications team to drop its crusade.
I don't think Fox can even convince themselves they're a credible news organization anymore.
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The right's favorite talking point on Thursday, with Ted Kennedy's funeral dominating the news, was to compare the event to Sen. Paul Wellstone's funeral and kvetch that Democrats were being crudely opportunistic in using Kennedy's death to help push harder for liberal health-care reform.
Laura Ingraham, filling in for O'Reilly on The Factor, was right in step, saying Dems were "playing the death card" and promising that such opportunism would cost them at the polls. Kvetch, kvetch, kvetch.
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Ed Schultz goes through the poll numbers that show just how badly so many Americans are buying into the outright lies on health care/insurance reform that are being put out there. There needs to be a real debate about just what's actually potentially going into these bills where the public is going to end up on the short end of the stick and put at the mercy of the health insurance companies without the distraction of having to debunk this other nonsense as well.
It took less than one year for Sarah Palin to go from being the Governor of Alaska, to VP candidate for the GOP, to civilian. She knows how to whip a crowd of bigots into a frenzy, she knows how to be folksy, but apparently, even Fox News fans don't think she's fit to hold political office. They chose for her instead, the job of homemaker: (warning: link goes to Fox News)
About a third of Americans think the best job for Palin is homemaker (32 percent), while nearly one in five see her as a television talk show host (17 percent). Vice president of the United States comes in third (14 percent), followed closely by college professor (10 percent), with president coming last (6 percent).
College professor? I'm not touching that one. It's widely known that Palin is testing the talk radio waters, but so far she's not having much luck. Radio giant Clear Channel has already passed, saying she's not capable of sustaining a full three hour show. I'm sure she could easily talk for three hours, but man, I'd need a barrel full of painkillers to make it through.
Blue Gal chimes in: Assuming that Sarah Palin's proper job is "homemaker" may appear sexist, but the question itself was sexist. Looking at the raw data for the poll (warning, also a FOX link, but essential in determining how the questions were slanted) the ONLY choices given to respondents were those listed above: President, VP, talk show host, college professor, and homemaker. Democratic respondents clearly thought the question was a joke when 45% of them said "homemaker," in other words, "stay home, Sarah." I'd like to know why 10% of Republican respondents admitted they "don't know" what job would be best for her: comin' up empty, Mister Steele? I've always said, quite sincerely, that Sarah Palin would be a huge success on the Crystal Cathedral/Focus on the Family mega-church lecture circuit.
Since Walter Cronkite's passing, new focus has been put on the decline of legitimate news sources in America. The big three networks have fallen the way of the corporate cable news/propaganda networks and people are turning to alternate sources like The Daily Show to get a little truth with their news. That's why it came as no surprise that Jon Stewart was voted Most Trusted Newscaster In America in a recent Time poll.
Not to take away from Stewart's accomplishments, but it does speak volumes about the way the American people view the major networks and their "news" departments -- and that they would take the word of a comedian more seriously than high profile, highly paid network news anchors.
Stewart has long taken on the corporate media, beginning with his notorious smackdown of the feckless Tucker Carlson on CNN's Crossfire in 2004, which lead to the eventual demise of the show. Since then, he has been relentless in his pursuit of the truth, and C&L has been posting videos from The Daily Show for years, along with many other blogs, big and small.
You gotta love it when a long shot wins - and it wasn't even close. Creigh Deeds took 50 percent of the vote in a three-way primary. [Note for political junkies: McAuliffe beat Deeds in only one district, the 3rd - where he sent Bill Clinton to campaign for him in the African-American community.] Deeds, a well-liked and personable guy, is also moderately conservative. Watch as the Democratic-consultant lemmings everywhere decide this means he won because he's a conservative, not in spite of it, and start yanking candidates ever rightward:
R. Creigh Deeds, a longtime state legislator from rural Bath County, won a stunning come-from-behind victory in the Democratic primary for Virginia governor last night, overwhelming a pair of better-funded and better-positioned opponents.
Deeds beat Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe in every region of the state, including vote-rich Northern Virginia, despite a pro-gun stance and relatively conservative positions that are out of line with many of the area's voters. His victory was so dominant that he captured 10 of the state's 11 congressional districts, including the one held by Moran's brother, U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr.
All three campaigns and state political experts had agreed that Deeds was coming on strong in the final days of the race, but no one expected him -- or the other candidates -- to come close to winning the 50 percent of the vote that he captured. In an e-mail sent to supporters less than two hours before polls closed, McAuliffe's campaign predicted that "this thing could come down to the wire." McAuliffe came in second, with 26 percent of the vote, followed by Brian Moran with 24 percent.
Deeds, 51, will face Republican Robert F. McDonnell in a general election battle that amounts to a rematch of the race for attorney general four years ago, which McDonnell barely won after a late surge by Deeds.
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Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh said that he wasn't backtracking on calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist like Gingrich did, but now he's saying that he might possibly support her because he likes Catholics and she may like "life" or some nonsense. Now all the rats are running for cover from their racist rants against Sonia.
I imagine some GOP internal polls came out saying that Gingrich and Buchanan and Limbaugh were going too far in their attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" and they are all pulling back.
Limbaugh:You know she would be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court and there are a lot of people worried about that, that does not bother me at all. I know a lot of Catholics and I love Catholics, but Sotomayor is a Catholic and she doesn't have a clear record on abortion and I'm, youuuu....overturning Roe vs Wade, that would be huge. I don't know if it will ever happen. I can see a possibility of supporting this nomination if I could be convinced if she does have a sensibility towards life.
