Motley Moose – Archive

 

Actually, the GOP version is only about 6,000 years

[Cross-posted from Teh Orange]

It’s not easy being green a GOPasaur. All signs points to their individual and collective extinction, yet they still walk the Earth, seemingly oblivious to their fate, unable to see what any sentient creature could see: it’s so over. The planet, it seems, is moving on without them and they’re left to ponder the cruel vicissitudes of fate. For surely, it must just be fate, right?? It couldn’t have been anything that they said or did, could it??

Like young children, taking to heart their teachers’ threats that their latest malfeasance would be etched in stone on their Permanent Record, GOPasaurs live in perpetual dread that their crimes, misdeeds, ethical lapses, and offhand remarks about female reproduction. Unfortunately (for them), while their witless song may have ended, the malady lingers on, thanks to the preservative properties of the fossil record.

Thus is is with unalloyed joy that some of our paleo-pals have discovered a solution to their extinction fears, a way to wipe the slate clean of their missteps and recast themselves in ways that the votersaurs will find appealing, even irresistable. Follow along below the Gobi Desert Easter Egg for the Rest of the Story…  

As reported in the New York Times and other reputable sources – and widely mocked elsewhere – Griftasaurus Karlroveii has concocted yet another plan to stave off extinction… or at least make some money off it if it’s really unavoidavle. In a party where dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence has reached levels worthy of paleo-pay-per-view coverage, the bespectacled behemoth believes that he has found the Secret of Eternal Relevance. As always, it involves money. Other people’s money, obviously.

His latest Life Extension scheme involves establishment of the Conservative Victory Party. While that sounds dreadfully bland, rest assured, blood will spill, and carnage will result. Don’t touch that dial! First on the CVP’s hit list? The witless Baggasaurs whose moronic Mesozoic meddling has already cost the GOPasaurs some key seats in the House and Senate. Like a clown car filled with velociraptors on crack, the Baggasaurs provided ample amusement for those of us on the other side of the aisle, but have been an unending torment for their supposed allies.

Spawned by the evil genius and deep pockets of the Kochasaurs and a few other one-percenters with more free time and money than brains, the Baggasaurs were foisted on the American public as a true grass-roots Paleo-phenomenon. Easily identified by their curious headgear, poorly-spelled signs, and angry vocalizations, the Baggasaurs played their parts to perfection. Their walnut-sized brains ensured that they would never discern that they were simply “extras” in the Greatest Story Never Told, and that despite their daily trips to the mailbox, their checks would never arrive.

Still, when measured in terms of damage done versus IQ points, the Baggasaurs will leave a dent in the fossil record. In retrospect, their Reign of Error may represent the Beginning of the End for GOPasaurs. Some analysts surmise that G. karlroveii is very much in agreement with this view, but clearly not above using it to advance his own objectives. Follow along below the coprolite horizon for more…  

The delegate math says that Romney gets a boost today; Santorum failed to qualify for delegates in some districts of Ohio and is not even on the ballot in Virginia.  But lacking the clear wins he desperately needs in Ohio and Tennessee, where polling indicates statistical ties, will Romney see his own shadow and retreat back to more weeks of interminable campaigning?  

Unless Santorum squeaks out wins in both states, probably not:

…once the Death Star got focused, Santorum’s numbers began to bleed. Tennessee would appear to be the key. If Santorum holds on there, he can argue plausibly that Romney still cannot close the deal with the voters he needs the most in the fall. A Republican candidate with a demonstrable weakness in the South is every Republican playa’s worst nightmare. But this still remains a contest between an actual campaign and three cults of personality. ‘Twas ever thus.

Charles P Pierce – How Romneybot 2.0 Built His Super Tuesday Death Star Esquire 6 Mar 12

Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

It seems the Republican circus has now gotten to the trapeze act with no net.  Recent polling for Arizona and Michigan suggests both are statistical ties with Michigan poised to be an all-night cliffhanger.  Romney faces a potentially disastrous defeat and Santorum, well, any momentum he wins or loses is unlikely to change his clear intention to wage electoral jihad.  

And they are both clearly doing themselves no favours:

Both Willard Romney and Rick Santorum – and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick the latter is? – ought to thank their personal deities that they’re not racehorses. Because, if they were, and given the way they’re both limping towards the finish line in Michigan and Arizona today, we’d already have the screen up, the syringe at the ready, and the veterinary ambulance discreetly parked off to one side.

Charles P Pierce – The Michigan Primary and the GOP’s Bloody Uprising Esquire 28 Feb 12

At this point it is hard to imagine how a win or loss for either changes the fundamentals of an increasingly toxic and historically damaging nomination for the GOP.  Pass the popcorn, please, and make it the good stuff.

The Republican primary continues to lurch forward with three contests today; Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.  None of these are binding in the allocation of delegates:

It is not a pretty image, believe you me.

Now, as the latest chapter in this drama, the Republican National Committee felt obliged to send out an e-mail reminding reporters that today’s voting in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota will mean sweet fk-all, despite what you may hear from John King and my man Chuck Todd.

Charles P Pierce – The RNC Clusterfk Esquire 7 Feb 12

Notwithstanding, there may be something at stake here for the Romney campaign which lit up recently with an unusual objection to the methodology of a specific poll, largely on the grounds of this little nugget:

According to ABC’s poll out this morning, by a 2 to 1 margin voters say the more they learn about Mitt Romney, the less they like him.

Josh Marshall – Taking a Toll TPM 6 Feb 12

Romney’s favourability is declining nationally as Obama’s enjoys a modest rise.  Not to mention that with Santorum leading in Missouri and competitive elsewhere the Romney juggernaut just might lose two out of three; a concern further evident by their pivot to attacking Santorum in recent days.

So, as far as delegates are concerned these events don’t amount to much but as a potential deflation of the Romney campaign with an upset or two it may be worth watching.

Polls close in a few hours and the Florida GOP primary will probably determine the course of the nomination race and possibly cement Romney’s frontrunner status.

Aggregate polling has shown a very slight tightening but the only significant variation among pollsters is the magnitude of the lead Romney enjoys although most agree he is now the expected victor.  One interesting exception has been the recent Dixie Strategies/The News-Press/First Coast News poll which predicts a dead heat:

Our poll has Gingrich leading Romney by an eyelash – 35.46 percent to 35.08.

Could our poll be right and all the others wrong? Maybe.

In polling terminology, our poll is what’s called an outlier (for a set of numerical data, any value that is markedly smaller or larger than other values).

However, there is one factor that works in our favor. The News-Press poll’s sample size (2,567 likely voters) is three to four times larger than that of other pollsters and thus our poll has a very small margin of error (1.93 percent) with a confidence level of 95 percent.

Scott Bihr – Why our poll may be right News-Press 28 Jan 12

Given the brawl that this campaign has become it will be interesting to see how the Gingrich/Romney battle in Florida influences the remaining contests.  In spite of Gingrich’s assertion that he will carry the fight all the way to the convention it is pretty hard to see how he could if he loses big to Romney tonight.  On the other hand a narrow victory or loss could derail Romney’s presumed coronation, given his immense media buy and his campaign’s apparently reckless attitude toward managing expectations in this contest.

The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has entered a new phase and it is beginning to look like support for Romney and Gingrich aligns with the deepening division between “establishment” Republicans and the insurgent Tea Party movement.  We have seen Tea Party support crystallise around Gingrich, even though he is an “imperfect vessel,” largely because they are even more unwilling to support the mainstream candidate.  

The Republican party is experiencing an insurgency among the same disaffected cohorts they had enlisted in their campaigns against Obama and it’s causing a degree of panic within their ranks evident in the sheer volume of negative campaigning they have deployed, most recently in the Florida primary, where their advertising buy is approaching $13.8 million; not to mention the unprecedented, co-ordinated public attacks on Gingrich’s candidacy by former and current legislative Republicans.  Consider the reaction from the self-appointed spokeswoman of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin:

What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters.

Sarah Palin – Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left Facebook 27 Jan 12

That Palin would identify the GOP establishment as the opposition and characterise their behaviour as “cannibalism” suggests the famous aphorism on the French revolution:

La révolution dévore ses enfants.

Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, Act I (1835)

The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children.  And Republicans are setting themselves up for an inevitable banquet on Newt and his supporters; a recipe for a disastrous nomination fight entirely of their own making and a Tea Party cohort even angrier at them than Obama, if such a thing is possible.  The challenge for Democrats is to stand back and let them have it out, for now.  They seem to be making an excellent job of it so far.

In an hour or so the GOP candidates still standing will square off in the last debate before the Florida primary.  With poll position changing hands between Newt and Mitt this week expect to see some strong performances.  If Newt delivers anything like this, as he did yesterday, it will definitely be worth watching live:

“We are not going to beat Barack Obama with some guy who has Swiss bank accounts, Cayman Island accounts, owns shares of Goldman Sachs who have foreclosed on Florida and is himself a stock holder in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while he tries to think the rest of us are too stupid to put the dots together and understand what this is all about,” Gingrich declared in a preamble to a decidedly angry stump speech.

“In 1992, he gave money to Democrats for Congress,” he added at another point. “He voted in the Democratic primary for Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. This is the man who stood up the other night and questioned my credentials as a Reaganite? This is the kind of gall they have, to think we are so stupid and we are so timid that we will let someone who voted for Paul Tsongas — in 1994 he is running for the U.S. Senate to the left of Teddy Kennedy. Do you know how hard it is to run to the left of Teddy Kennedy? And he says, ‘You know, I don’t want to go back to the Reagan-Bush years, I was an independent then.'”

“He won’t tell you that now, because he is counting on us not having YouTube,” Gingrich said. “That’s how much he thinks we are stupid. And we are not stupid. The message we should give Mitt Romney is: we aren’t that stupid and you aren’t that clever.”

Sam Stein – Mitt Romney ‘Is Counting On Us Not Having YouTube’ Huffington Post 25 Jan 12

Heh, grab some popcorn and join the fun.

One would be forgiven for confusion over the issue of Speaker Gingrich’s ethics investigation given the conflicting claims made in the course of the current GOP nomination.  Out of eighty-four complaints made against Gingrich the Select Committee on Ethics made a case out of three, two were not pursued because he had ceased the offending activity leaving one case against him for improperly claiming tax-exempt status for a partisan college course he taught known as “Renewing American Civilization:”

On December 13, 1996 the Committee issued a [Statement of Alleged Violations] charging Mr. Ginrich with three counts of violations of House Rules. Two counts concerned the failure to seek legal advice in regard to the 501(c)(3) projects, and one count concerned the providing the Committee with information which he knew or should have known was inaccurate.

In the Matter of Representative Newt Gingrich House Committee on Ethics 17 Jan 97

After a year of investigation the bipartisan Committee found as follows:

It was the opinion of the Members of the subcommittee and the Special Counsel, that based on the facts as they are currently known, the appropriate sanction for the conduct described in the original Statement of Alleged Violations is a reprimand and the payment of $300,000 toward the cost of the preliminary investigation.

In the Matter of Representative Newt Gingrich House Committee on Ethics 17 Jan 97

On first principles Gingrich is right that he didn’t pay a fine and it is arguable that the sanction was “narrow and technical,” as he has been suggesting since before the finding was released.  But it is hardly an exoneration, as he has claimed, and the complaints which didn’t make it through the hurdles imposed by a majority Republican House at the time illustrate a pattern of deliberate flaunting of the laws of election finance, the rules of legislative probity and the regulations governing lobbying on a grandiose scale over almost the whole of Gingrich’s congressional career.

Image: J Scott Applewhite/AP

The Republican party is in crisis, as has been evident for the bulk of this nomination race, but now its chickens have come home to roost.  The Tea Party experiment, already causing second thoughts and ruction among establishment and legislative Republicans, and their sponsors, was being assiduously ignored as the well-oiled Romney coronation rolled ever on while a clown-car of unlikely aspirants came and went, to the mortification of the electorate and the evident relief of party elders.  

However one rarely sees such a lengthy, cautious, well-funded campaign collapse in a single evening as Romney’s did at Thursday’s debate; a performance undermining with prevarication and dissembling the narrative his handlers had so carefully crafted for him over previous months.  

It was clearly his worst performance in several seasons of campaigning and at that moment it proved catastrophic.  Every pre-existing doubt about his candidacy was exacerbated by his weaselling over his tax returns; he plainly can’t be trusted, the gold standard of a presidential candidacy in either party.  And it changed the course of the campaign going forward.  He seemed damaged goods even before Gingrich cleaned his clock tonight.

So Newton Leroy Gingrich, the “bad boy” of Nineties conservatism, swoops in, channelling working-class, Right-wing angst, to deliver a crushing blow to the only credible argument Romney had; the slender one of electability from the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama.

Clearly the “base” would prefer going down in flames with Gingrich than slitting their wrists in a warm bath with Romney.