Via Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly, we are not quite done yet with GOP “debates”:
Mr. Huckabee will host his third presidential forum on Saturday, an executive for the Fox News Channel said on Tuesday. So far three candidates, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, have committed. Ron Paul has still not indicated whether he will attend.
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The program, which is scheduled from 8 to 10 p.m., will be broadcast from Ohio, the executive said, speaking anonymously because a formal announcement had not been made.
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Mr. Huckabee will focus the forum on jobs and the economy, a particularly potent subject in Ohio where the manufacturing sector has suffered greatly. Underscoring that distress, the setting for the event will be a now-shuttered DHL plant in Wilmington…
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During the program, Mr. Huckabee will be joined by Charlie Gasparino, a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network, and Elaine Chao, a labor secretary to George W. Bush and now a Fox News contributor, and three Ohio residents whose lives have been affected by the recession…
Huckabee, Gasparino and Mrs. Mitch McConnell! I hope those unfortunate “Ohio residents” have their affairs in order, because if a just Judeo-Christian god is ever going to smite those among His followers who have profaned His honor, this event would seem a good place to start.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I had a doctor’s appointment today, for the first time in ages, because I had Insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (specifically, the California Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan), and had an EKG and a chest X-Ray.
Thanks to the amazing IT operation at my local clinic, I already know that the EKG and X-Ray showed nothing unusual.
Now, in the next couple of days, I have to go do some blood tests, which I’m sure will shit on me from a great height.
I will also be getting a Tetanus vaccine.
Fuck you, Republicans, and purity trolls.
Martin
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Commie.
Mike G
DHL announced the shutdown of its Wilmington operations on November 10, 2008, over two months before Obama took office, so of course it’s his fault. And neither Hucksterbee nor Fox will point out to their drooling audience.
guckertgannon
That’s the LA Times, Thursday morning…pretty scary.
Russ
Republicans discussing job promotion?
“Mr. Huckabee will focus the forum on jobs and the economy”
I see it like this.
It’s like me going down to the town highway garage looking to buy some doughnuts. They don’t do doughnuts, they do road repairs and republicans don’t do jobs stuff, they do anything but and this is evidenced by their legislative record.
I got my doughnuts at the bakery where they make doughnuts and Democrats do job’s stuff and this is evidenced by their legislative record.
So I’m guessing that a poll that asks if you can get doughnuts at a highway garage, 27% would say yes.
Linda Featheringill
Sounds like quite a party. I think I’ll miss it.
To my brothers and sisters in Ohio:
These bastards are planning to exploit your trouble, your insecurity, and your misery for their own benefit. They haven’t done jack shit for you in the last two years and most likely won’t do anything for your now. You’d be better off if you just didn’t dance for them. At least, you could keep your dignity intact.
danielx
Y’know, one would think that Huckabee and other leading Republican lights would have figured out that these debates are…counterproductive. Every one of them seems to result in a greater display of heinous fuckery, with the candidates vying to out crazy each other for the benefit of the wingnuts in the audience. Not to mention, in Santaronola’s case, his tenuous grasp on the English language in general and grammar in particular…
Unfortunately, the display of teh crazy seems to do nothing but horrify the larger audience watching the debates, a significant number of whom are women waiting to see what new outrage pertaining to women is going to be uttered,
Yes, one would think that those in charge of the debates would have figured out that these displays of wingnuttery in all its dubious splendor aren’t doing anything but convincing independent voters in particular that the Republican party has set the throttle on the crazy train to full speed on a downhill grade. Maybe they should try not to “overexpose the candidates”, as Molly Ivins used to say? Not to mention the audiences, who cheer executions, boo soldiers and mock the ill and dying – the Republican base in full view, and it ain’t a pretty sight.
One would be wrong, clearly.
Another Halocene Human
@The prophet Nostradumbass: As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans who opposed ACA and the purity trolls who opposed ACA can fuck off together.
Another Halocene Human
@Russ: Of course they have donuts. Walk into any mechanic’s office and there will be stale donuts from 5am (including one half-eaten one) in a box liberally decorated with black greasemonkey palm prints.
There will also be monumentally shitty coffee available in styrofoam cups.
Now, if you want to purchase a nice, fresh donut rather than trespass in a hard-hat zone to cadge a stale one…
Another Halocene Human
@Linda Featheringill: I think OH has already gotten a nice taste of the Republican “jobs” medicine on the state level already. I’m thinking this will go over like a lead balloon. But then, there’s always the rentier class. No, I don’t work (honest work) for a living, and I vote.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
I just hope those ohioans wear fashionable enough raingear.
Linda Featheringill
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
:-)
mai naem
I thought Gasparino worked for CNBC? Does this mean he got fired from CNBC? Did the fool switch to the loser Fox Business network? Either way I believe Gasparino is the guy who had the rant about loser homeowners about people who were losing their houses to foreclosure. CNBC is a piece of crap with Maria Antoinette Bartiromo , Joe Kernen and Kudlow but I still love the face that they kick FBN’s ass.
mai naem
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I would love love love for somebody who to ask what health insurance Rick Santorum uses because I bet he uses his Senate insurance which you get even if you’ve served only one term. He and his six kids probably live off the big bad gubmint. Also too, Ron Pau(bet he’s not turned down Medicare), the Newster and I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney uses his Mass government insurance.
Russ
@Another Halocene Human: where I work you’ll find todays Dunkin box stacked on top of yesterday’s box on top of another box with the usual oil, grease and dirt markings left by guys. But, no doughnuts, flakes of icing and a crumb trail but definetly no doughnuts.
Another Halocene Human
I was just reading the comments on the news story about the “Go To Hell Barack” ad (which Metro says they had to run because of the “Jellybean Republic” ad court battle in the 80’s… yet ridiculing Reagan for a fool is hardly the same thing as CURSING a sitting president; whatever, I give up), and a number of white commenters defended the ad and their “rights and freedoms” (one even called others “sheeple”). The way it was phrased, I’m starting to wonder if “rights and freedoms” is the new bircher/kkk/white identity-speak for white supremacy.
Another Halocene Human
@Russ: Ah, I’m below the Krispy Kreme line. Those babies have a shelf life measured in minutes. Once they are cold, fuggedaboudit.
Another Halocene Human
@mai naem: Oh yesyesyes, I would die of joy!
Schlemizel
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
So, you are saying you got a bunch of expensive medical tests you didn’t really need? Typical liberal!
8-{D
Raven
@Schlemizel: I have this damn little lump on my thigh and my quad is numb, guess I have to do that too.
Schlemizel
@Another Halocene Human:
Yes, I’m pretty sure that “rights and freedoms” are in the new code word lexicon. Because its us old, white, Christian (at least by appearance) men who are losing all those things.
The mean ol gubmint is taking our rights to abuse, trample and generally make a hell of the lives of those who are not one of us away from us! Without the freedom to lynch, rape, wrongfully steal labor, and discriminate against those not OWC&M we lose what made this country great!
Schlemizel
@Raven:
I hope your tests turn out to be ‘needless’ also Raven. Finding nothing will be great news, good luck.
Egg Berry
Isn’t DHL a German company? Why do the Republicans hate America?
kay
Their base doesn’t want to talk about jobs and the economy.
They want to talk about sluts and birth control pills and food stamps and Obama’s parents and Obama’s wife and union thugs and ACORN.
If the GOP base wanted to talk about jobs and the economy, that’s what they’d be talking about.
Instead, we have pundits telling candidates that the GOP base wants to talk about jobs and the economy, but that isn’t what the actual GOP base responds to.
JGabriel
From GOP Struggles To Contain Birth Control Fallout @ TPM, a Republican with a clue:
I want to note for the record that this is essentially what I’ve been arguing all along. Anyone who was at the NYC Balloon Juice Drinkathon last month can verify that the first thing I said — in response to a question about GOP birth control activism from DougJ — was, “I think the whole thing is comical. Americans like sex.”
.
Davis X. Machina
@Egg Berry: Not German, at least not originally. Deutche Post began swallowing them in pieces beginning in the late ’90’s. They don’t do US domestic any more, basically, though.
DHL’s early origins suggests a couple of movies waiting to be made. Cal Berkeley law students, a Plymouth Duster, kids getting free plane tickets in exchange for carrying documents in their hand luggage, a billionaire, DNA paternity tests….
Southern Beale
Montana district judge in hot water for forwarding horrible joke about President Obama implying his mother had sex with a dog…
You know, the joke wasn’t even funny. People, do NOT forward this shit.
kay
Their problem is, the stalkerish obsession with women is what their base WANTS.
Santorum isn’t pulling Catholic moderates in.
He lost Catholics in MI.
He’s pulling in evangelicals.
sherparick
@Mike G: Actually, besides being actually closed on the man who must not be mentioned watch (President George W. Bush), DHL’s decision to close the plant was in the works from at least early 2008 and had nothing to do with the recession, but rather with DHL restructuring and changing its plans, after pocketing a good portion of the State of Ohio’s development money.
http://blog.cleveland.com/business/2008/05/dhl_deal_with_ups_could_end_th.html
Linda Featheringill
@Southern Beale:
That particular “joke” was high-level racist.
Those of us who are old enough to remember it can tell you that old-time racism was built on lack of even basic respect. [I hope younger people aren’t as familiar with it.]
What the judge did was probably not illegal but was certainly behavior unbecoming of a member the judiciary.
sherparick
@mai naem: FBN was obviously Ailes and Murdoch feeling at the top of their arrogance oats back in 2009 when FN was at its cable news peak. FN when it was creaetd actually had an audience, all those older whites who have been screaming at their TVs for years at Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, or Bernie Shaw on CNN when the were presented facts that disagreed with their conclusions. So as they say in Ecology, their was a niche to be filled, and FN filled it. But business news that is heavy on ideology and light of facts has a draw back: it can cost you money. Further, Ailes had created CNBC and it still bears that Conservative ideology so that it feeds the conservative businessman’s id right up to the limit of the facts. As the result, there really is no niche for FBN to fill.
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale:
@Linda Featheringill: It was front paged last night.
Kirbster
How much do you want to bet that the “three Ohio residents whose lives have been affected by the recession” will be small business owners who blame taxes and regulation instead of lack of demand for their goods and services for all their problems?
kay
@danielx:
There’s this weird insistence among punditry and editorial writers that the members of political parties do not actually reflect or even comprise that political party.
I’m baffled by it. To me, it seems obvious. “The Republican Party” is not an abstract idea. It’s a group of people. If the members of ” The Republican Party” are booing gay soldiers or calling female law students who testify sluts, that’s what the Republican Party IS.
If these candidates are the best that the Republican Party can do, that’s the reality. There’s not some other, better, “Republican Party” waiting to be heard from.
The place where I work has a name, but it doesn’t have an independent identity apart from the people who work here. We ARE it. There is no other.
Conservative pundits can aspire to a “more serious” Republican Party, but they can’t claim it exists. It doesn’t. If it did, we’d be seeing it.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: Plato’s cave, Kay. What you and I are seeing is just a shadow of the real Republican Party flickering on the wall.
kay
@danielx:
I went to a meet the candidates Tuesday night, one federal candidate, one state, and the whole thing was Q and A.
They asked about privatizing the turnpike, they asked about school funding, they asked about Lake Erie environmental regs.
They didn’t ask about Rick Santorum’s wife or his parents or his birth control practices. They didn’t ask whether Romney’s a “real” Christian.
We didn’t have to announce “this will be about serious things, and please don’t embarrass Democrats or drive away independents with your craziness!”
Republicans are holding further hearings on birth control today because that’s what Republicans want.
Egg Berry
@kay:
Don’t leave out the whores race media.
kay
@Egg Berry:
Right, but then why didn’t that work like that in the candidate forum I went to? No one told them to ask about the turnpike.
Are Republican intellectuals and yearning conservative pundits telling me media completely drives the discussion in the GOP base? That w/out this nasty political media the GOP base would be discussing marginal tax rates?
What does that say about the GOP base? They’re individual people. They have some autonomy and agency. The federal judge in Montana is a member of that base. Arguably, he’s a powerful and influential member of that base. He could have sent an email about Obama’s interpretation of the commerce clause, but he didn’t.
Who’s driving whom?
Egg Berry
@kay:
The same reason it doesn’t work in most local arenas: The Washington pack of 24/7 click whores weren’t around to do the questions.
I don’t think they’re driving the conversation, except to cheer it on because it brings them eyeballs. And because it’s easier than working for a living.
kay
@Southern Beale:
I’m going to get very upset if political media insist Obama respond or comment.
He shouldn’t have to respond. It doesn’t merit a response from the President, and no other President would be asked to respond. They’re going to want him to address it because they love, love, love this shit, but I resent them putting it on him. It’s NOT HIS JOB to address all the various mental issues and personal problems of the Republican base. He’s not their therapist, and he’s not the national race relations mediator. It’s too much to ask.
kay
@Southern Beale:
Also. The Montana bar should smack him. Lawyers like that they police their own profession through the bar and state courts. They guard that authority, they take it seriously, and they’re proud of it. If they aren’t going to police their own, that all goes out the window.
That lunatic birther-dentist should have been smacked by the CA bar LONG ago. She’s an embarrassment and she’s actually creating a lot of problems, thousands of hours wasted, etc.
What did that ridiculous show she put on in Georgia COST?
Mino
@kay:There’s this weird insistence among punditry and editorial writers that the members of political parties do not actually reflect or even comprise that political party
That defense is stolen from the Catholic Church.
kay
@Egg Berry:
Sorry. I don’t buy that either. They’re asking candidates if Obama is a Christian.
Obama holds town halls. Why isn’t he getting questions on whether Romney is a “real” Christian?
There’s this idea that the GOP base has been led astray by their leaders, or something. How about this? How about the GOP base strike out on their own and stop booing gay soldiers? How about the GOP base OBJECT when Rush Limbaugh starts attacking a law student who had the temerity to testify? How about the GOP base in Montana stand up and say “that judge doesn’t represent what the GOP is about”.
They’re not children. They’re not being “led” anywhere. This is where they want to go.
kay
@Egg Berry:
The corrupt sheriff/pundit in Arizona launched a fake investigation into the President because that’s what his base demands.
If his base wanted to have a wonkish, serious discussion about immigration reform, I guess they could do that, but they don’t, so they don’t.
The GOP base attracts people like the corrupt pundit-sheriff because their base demand those people.