Tag Archives: conservatives

Fox dumps Palin … imagine that

The Fox News Channel says it has parted company with Sarah Palin, the former half-term Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee.

But it hasn’t. Not really. Palin will continue to get guest spots on Fox. She’ll get to have her voice heard. She’ll also be free to appear on other news and commentary outlets — have you put her on your speed dial, MSNBC?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/sarah-palin-dumped-by-fox-119357.html?hp=l2_4

She remains a hot commodity among TEA party conservatives. She speaks their language, whatever that is.

But she also has become a political circus act. The reality TV appearances haven’t delivered any broader appeal. The drama involving some of her family members has created more snickers and ridicule than any politician should want. Her bombastic rhetoric has become tiresome and, frankly, quite repetitive.

However, in this age where public policy intermingles with pop culture, Sarah Barracuda will remain among us.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona chose Palin to run with him in 2008, seeking a “game-changer” in the race for the presidency. Her selection might have changed the game, all right, but not necessarily in the way Sen. McCain expected or hoped — especially as American began hearing the things that flew out of her mouth. Remember the “death panels”? And those amazing stumbles while being interviewed by what she calls the “lame-stream media”? Priceless.

As Politico reports: “When Palin was at her zenith, she made frequent appearances, and Fox installed a camera at her house. But executives consider her less relevant now, and her appearances were sometimes hampered by the vast time difference with Alaska.”

Is she going away? Not any time soon. If ever.

 

Huck needs to cool the rhetoric

“We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”

That was the Rev. Mike Huckabee in a conference call to conservative activists. The one-time Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor is going to announce soon his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination and this is going to be a theme of his second White House campaign.

Honestly, he needs to settle down.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/27/republican-candidates-evangelicals_n_7148310.html?ir=Politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

Huckabee and a host of other GOP candidates are roiling the party’s base by using scary rhetoric, declaring that there’s a phony war against Christians in the United States. Rick Santorum says it. So does Bobby Jindal. Same for Scott Walker. They all oppose same-sex marriage and suggest that this issue is pretext for the war against Christian belief in this country.

I once considered Huck to be a fairly reasonable man. He ran for president in 2008 and acquitted himself fairly well during much of the GOP primary. He’s gotten a bit overheated in recent years. His statement now about the threat of “criminalizing” Christianity goes beyond what’s reasonable discourse.

He knows that’s not going to happen. Ever.

In this supercharged political climate, it plays well among the party’s base, which seems to believe anything that its political leaders say out loud.

 

House GOP 'survey' loaded with baloney

Nice try, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

You sought to ask me my views on how you and National Republican Congressional Committee are seeking to save the country from those reckless and feckless liberals in the White House. I ain’t taking the bait, Mr. Speaker.

You’ll get your State of the Nation Survey back in the mail. I even signed my name to it to validate its findings.

You see, sir, I don’t share your view that President Obama has wrecked the country. Almost every question you pose in your survey presumes that you and your party are right and the president and his party are wrong … across the board.

To be fair, I do agree with a few of the questions you pose. I believe, as you do, that the feds should work “closely with state and local officials to stop border violence and enforce federal immigration laws.” I also believe in the Second Amendment’s guarantee that we have a right “to keep and bear arms.” I agree with you that our legal system should “better protect victims and consumers while also giving manufacturers and small businesses confidence to keep jobs in America.” I even believe in “Republicans’ landmark ban on all earmarks” attached to federal legislation.

So, Mr. Speaker, your survey isn’t a total loser with me.

However, I do not subscribe to your notion that liberal/progressive policies are inherently bad for the country. I happen to be a good-government liberal who thinks the Obama administration has done well to revive the economy and keep us safe from terrorists. I also believe, contrary to your view, that our standing in the world hasn’t been diminished. Furthermore, I believe that the Affordable Care Act, which likely needs more fine-tuning, should remain on the books, as it is providing millions of Americans with health insurance they didn’t have before it was enacted.

Those are my views, Mr. Speaker, and I’m sticking with them.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent.

God bless the United States of America.

 

That's the liberal caucus we have known

Well now. It appears that Democratic liberals in Congress are rising up to give their leaders as much grief as the tea party Republicans are set to do to their leaders.

Excellent! That’s the Democratic Party with which I came of age back in the 1960s.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/keystone-xl-senate-liberals-113009.html?hp=r1_3

The defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate seems to have juiced up the lefty caucus on Capitol Hill. They’re set to do battle with the more, um, “establishment” members of the Democratic minority in both congressional houses.

It’s looking like we might have two intraparty squabbles erupting in Congress when the next body convenes in January.

The president is stuck having to deal now with two warring factions within each party. He’s bound to anger the extremists on the left, too.

As Politico reported:

“I will use whatever tools I have as a senator to protect the environment,” said Sen. (Jeff) Merkley, a liberal from Oregon. Asked if he could ever envision himself performing a Rand Paul-style talking filibuster in the Republican Senate, (Sheldon)

Whitehouse of Rhode Island replied: “Oh, of course. We will have more tools in the minority than we had in the majority.”

The liberals don’t like President Obama any more than the conservatives do, or so one might be led to think.

Which begs the question: If Obama is ticking off conservatives so much, how is it he can do the same thing to liberals?

A truism in journalism is that if you’re angering both sides of an argument, then you’re doing a good job.

Not so in politics.

Obviously.