He was talking about you, NYT

The Great Republican Purge
Fri Jan. 14, 2011 11:13 AM PST — Photo from flickr user WisPolitics.com used under a Creative Commons license. Officially, Republicans are meeting today to select a new chairman of the Republican National Committee. Unofficially, they are about to finally Purge the party of any last vestments of moderation. The RNC's 168 members will decide the fate of Michael Steele in a major vote to select their next chairman. The election has been closely watched, as Steele has been highly unpopular i...

GOP chief Michael Steele fights for second term
OXON HILL, Md. — Embattled GOP Chairman Michael Steele survived the first round of voting Friday as he fought to hang onto his post leading the Republican National Committee. Four challengers argued that they would be better stewards of the party heading into the 2012 Elections, when defeating President Barack Obama will be the GOP's primary objective. Steele, who surprised even his closest aides by seeking re-election, came in second in the committee's first round of voting, getting 44 ...

Obama Should Continue Tucson Speech Themes in State of the Union
Aside from the length of the Speech—half an hour rather than the usual five minutes or less—something else made President Obama’s remarks at the raucous Tucson memorial service different from every other Presidential Speech in times of tragedy. If you look as far back as President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, or President Roosevelt’s address immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or President Clinton’s remarks at the prayer service following the Okl...

Blame Righty: A Condensed History
I agree with President Obama. When it comes to politicizing random violence, he and his supporters have been "far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than" they do. Recognition is the first step toward Reconciliation. It's time to recognize the poisonous pervasiveness of the Blame Righty meme. For the past two years, Democratic officials, liberal Activists and Journalists have jumped to libelous conclusions about individual shooting ...

Context Is Everything.
Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling tells us that Kay Bailey Hutchison was probably toast, had she decided to run again (via Jon Chait): Hutchison's Approval Rating with Republicans on our last Texas poll was just 58%. To put that number into some perspective Lisa Murkowski 's approval with Republicans in January of 2010 was 77% and Mike Castle 's in March of 2009 was 69%. They both started out in a much better position against their Tea Party opposition than Hutchison would have, and they both ...

House Republicans Prepare to Get Back to Business of Politics
Baltimore, Md. — House Republicans are gathered here for a policy retreat that amounts to hitting the reset button for the new House majority in the aftermath of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson last week. The rampage last Saturday that left Ms. Giffords gravely injured, 13 others wounded and six dead has totally consumed the congressional agenda since then and interrupted the early days of the new Republican governing majority as it attempted to put its stamp on th...

GOP push to repeal ObamaCare will resume next week
Via the Washington Post , which reports that it will happen with a so-called ‘more civil tone’: House Republican leaders said Thursday that they will begin their effort to Repeal the new health-care law next week, a return to normal legislative business after the shootings in Arizona suspended activity on Capitol Hill. But no one quite knows what normal will look like, following a wrenching week in which members confronted concerns about their own safety and whether their heated rhe...

GOP Choosing A Leader
Steele’s biggest mistake? The national GOP is more than $20 million in Debt - which isn’t surprising considering the ideologically-bankrupt way they ran the country during the George W. Bush years. Anyway, over the last few weeks, Steele has sought to take credit for the dramatic Republican gains that have taken place at the Ballot Box since he assumed office - which is obviously a slap in the face to the Tea Party movement that is ultimately responsible for the GOP’...

At Hispanics' conference, Tim Pawlenty skirts immigration
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty , a potential 2012 Republican presidential contender, spoke at a conference for Hispanic Conservatives Friday but mostly skirted the Controversial issue of Immigration Reform. Pawlenty, speaking to a small but engaged audience at the Hispanic Leadership Network conference in Coral Gables, addressed the need for job growth, mainly through educational reform, a topic many Hispanics care about. But only at the end of his 20-minute Speech did he touch on immigrat...

The link between Jared Loughner and Lee Harvey Oswald
An American politician takes a bullet to the head in broad daylight. Three days later, under the headline “The spiral of hate,” The New York Times editorial board has this to say about it: “None of us can escape a share of the fault for the spiral of unreason and violence that has now found expression in [gunfire].” In the same spirit, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court blames the act on “the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our...

Gabrielle Giffords Is a Woman: Here's Why It Matters
​On Wednesday night, four days after being shot through the head, Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords opened her eyes. Along with her husband, Astronaut Mark Kelly, she was surrounded by a group of women whom she considers both friends and mentors, including New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. As Pelosi put it, "We saw a little girl power too." In a post on Jezebel, Irin Carmon writes about how the ...

Pew poll: Republican buyer's remorse
You'd think after the election, the Republican Congressional leaders would be granted a bit of a Honeymoon. But if that's what you thought, you thought wrong. Did the Lame Duck session damage the GOP's appeal because they were too accomodating? Is Health Care reform Repeal turning off voters? Maybe a little of both, depending on whether you're a Tea Party supporter or not. Overall with the public, they get 34/43 approve/disapprove, a -9 and that's 30/45, a -15 with indies. Those are bot...

Three Reasons Republicans Can Cheer for T-Paw
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has been doing the rounds lately, promoting his new book and signaling quite clearly that he is going to run for president. He's still pretty much an unknown quantity among the mass public, but I think there are a lot of reasons for Conservatives to take a close look at him. Here are three. (1) He's good on Budgets. This is a huge deal for the Republican Party. For the last ten years, the party...

Christie to keynote NRCC
Washington (CNN) - New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie will headline the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual Fundraising dinner in March, the group announced Friday. In a statement, NRCC Chair Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said, "Governor Christie has become a highly regarded Republican since winning his gubernatorial race in 2009, and we are excited that he will be joining us in March. With his credentials and experience, his address will be of great value to our supporters as ...

Which Obama will be at the SOTU?
Which Obama Will Be At The SOTU? by digby There's a lot of chatter in the beltway about whether or not the president is going to put Social Security on the menu in the State of the Union. Evidently, there is a real debate going on amongst his advisors, which is depressing, to say the least. Now that Republicans control the House and Obama is facing Reelection, the political dynamic is different and liberal groups fear the president might be willing to cut a deal on Social Security. Labor uni...

Any pause in harsh rhetoric may be short-lived
(01-13) 23:27 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite President Barack Obama's appeal for civility, history suggests any move toward cooler political Rhetoric after the Arizona shootings will soon fade. An early test will come Jan. 25, when some lawmakers are asking Democrats and Republicans to sit side by side for Obama's State of the Union Speech, rather than splitting the House chamber by party as usual. Initial reactions to that idea on Capitol Hill were not encouraging, especially from the Republi...

Ellison: Palins political ride may be over
During Tim Pawlenty’s interview on The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart pressed the former Governor to defend or reject government-as-tyranny language — particularly regarding President Obama’s policies — that has come to dominate the Right Wing of the Republican party through the Tea Party movement. In a unanimous vote by outgoing Board Members Tuesday evening, the Minneapolis School Board passed a resolution that significantly beefs up its LGBT Curriculum and anti-bul...

"Half A Trillion In Cuts To Medicare"
Watch as GOP Rep. Jim Renacci (OH) is confronted at a local town hall meeting, asked what the heck he thinks he is doing saying he will vote to Repeal the Health Care reform law. Renacci replies that he and fellow Republicans campaigned on reversing the "half a Trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare." (From Daily Kos.) Republicans campaigned on protecting seniors from Medicare cuts. No way around it. In the 2010 election campaign Republican groups ran millions and millions of dollars of ads prom...

Shot US judge laid to rest, lawmaker improving
Marty Kool kneels across the street from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton church whe... The US Federal Judge who was among six people killed in Tucson was laid to rest Friday, as doctors said the lawmaker targeted in the shootings continues to make progress. Judge John Roll's Funeral came a day after that of the rampage's youngest Victim, nine-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green, hailed by President Barack Obama as an inspiration to heal America's poisonous politics. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords ...

Liberal Scumbags of the Week
"Ah, Fort Hood has to be called a Terrorist Attack right now before any investigations, but either 9/11 wasn’t during President Bush’s term, or it wasn’t a Terrorist attack. Either way, Dana Perino is an embarrassment, and today’s "Worst Person in the," how do you pronounce this? W-O-R-L-D? "World." "Left, right, middle – politicians and citizens – sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would acce...

Uncle Sam Wants His AAA Rating
By GRAHAM BOWLEY NYT Is Wall Street listening to the Tea Party? Two major Credit Ratings agencies warned Thursday that the United States might tarnish its triple-A credit rating if its National Debt kept growing. It was not the first time the agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, warned that the nation’s gilt-edged rating might fall into jeopardy. But the two statements, made within hours of each other, were seized on by Deficit hawks as further evidence that the gov

Seventy Five Percent of Americans Want Obamacare Law Changed
A new poll finds 75 percent of Americans say they want the ObamaCare law that prompts Abortion-funding and Rationing concerns changed. The question they differ on is how that change should take place — by repealing the bill, de-funding it, or modifying it in other ways to ferret out some of the problems and lessen the damage it could cause the country. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely Voters want to change the law, while only 18% want it left ...

Paul LePage: NAACP Can 'Kiss My Butt' (VIDEO)
Paul LePage, Maine's new Tea Party-backed Governor, isn't going to attend an NAACP event to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and if the NAACP doesn't like it, LePage said, they can "kiss my butt." "They are a special interest. End of story ... and I'm not going to be held hostage by Special Interests," LePage said, according to CNN affiliate WCSH "And if they want, they can look at my family picture. My son happens to be black, so they can do whatever they'd like about it." LePage has an ado...

Maine governor says NAACP can 'kiss my butt'
(CNN) - Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage is keeping up his reputation for blunt language, telling an unhappy NAACP chapter that they can "kiss my butt." The Governor made the comments to CNN affiliate WCSH after being asked about criticism he received from the organization for refusing to attend an event it is sponsoring on behalf of Martin Luther King Day. "They are a special interest. End of story...and I'm not going to be held hostage by Special Interests. And if they want, they can lo...

Maine Governor Says NAACP Can Kiss My Butt
Whee-doggies!  A politician with a pair! (CNN) — Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage is keeping up his reputation for blunt language, telling an unhappy NAACP chapter that they can “kiss my butt.” The Governor made the comments to CNN affiliate WCSH after being asked about criticism he received from the organization for refusing to attend an event it is sponsoring on behalf of Martin Luther King Day. “They are a special interest. End of story…and I’m not go...