The Obama campaign has been on a run that makes Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of ’em, just look like droopy-eyed armless children:
Fox just released a new presidential poll showing President Obama leading Mitt Romney by 9 points. That’s the second poll today and the third in the last two days. The other two (from CNN and Ipsos/Reuters) both had Romney down by 7.
Don’t tell me that hammering Romney on Bain and taxes hasn’t helped, because it has.
When Democrats were the dominant party, they ran ads accusing their opponents of causing nuclear war and they scared up votes from dead people in Illinois. They also defeated Hitler and the Great Depression, passed Civil Rights, and presided over the greatest economic expansion in human history. Let’s be that party again. Because I’m tired of the one that frets about being fair to its opponents while it watches the nation burn.
And the hits keep on coming:
dp
Kevin Drum does not approve this message. I do, though.
BGinCHI
Donkey smash.
Tom Johnson
Where’s the “like” button. I NEED A FUCKING”LIKE” BUTTON! LIKE LIKE LIKE!
schrodinger's cat
It is simple really, do the opposite of what MSM says. They are that out of touch. Good for Obama, wish that Gore and Kerry would have done the same.
danielx
Wingnut tears of rage, frustration and confusion. It’s not supposed to be like this!
Delightful.
elmo
ZOMG. Bada BING, bada BOOM.
I’d read about him saying “I’ll get back to you” about the tax rate, but I hadn’t ever seen the clip. That nervous laugh is straight out of Guilty Conscience Central Casting.
kindness
Not a Kevin Drum fan eh DougJ?
Americans want people who stand for something. If it isn’t the something they prefer, they still respect those that stand for something more than the wishy washy Vichy liberals.
jp7505a
When playing the negative game in politics tis better to be hung for a wolf than a sheep and win. Maybe the D’s have finally learned that playing the game like the good civics lesson will only result in their being handed your head on election day. Of course the loss might be written up as a great case study in poli-sci 101 but that is rather cold comfort
schrodinger's cat
If you are giving Punditubbies a sad, you are doing it right.
BGinCHI
@kindness: This.
What John Kerry never did. Stand up for who he is and what he believes in forcefully. If you don’t do that, you lose. And if you do that and you lose, at least you did the right thing.
Wag
Kick them when they’re up
Kick them when they’re down
Kick them when they’re up
Kick them al around
Go team Donkey!
It’s great to see a fighting spirit in the Dems. We haven’t had it since McGovern. Frankly we’re lucky to have had as many democratic presidents as we have had in the past 40 years. The reign of the peaceful hippie Democrats is over.
Rommie
They’ve Roped the Big Dope chicago-style the past few weeks, and counter-punched the crap outta Mittens. He’ll be less coherent than Butt-Head at the RNC if this pace continues.
It’s a beautiful thing to see people with a clue in action. Keep it up for 3 more months.
jrg
Romney will still get a bump during the convention when his VP pick tells the mooks that we can get more free shit by not paying taxes… Unless it’s Ryan. Please, lord, please let it be Ryan.
Dave
Holy shit, DougJ, I do not know why democrats don’t tell that same story you just told every goddamned day. That’s great stuff, no joke.
Eta: occurs to me that as long as I’ve been conscious (I’m 31), the story of the democratic party has been told by republicans, and democrats like drum have let them have it. Fuck that noise.
Roger Moore
@elmo:
Unpossible. Romney doesn’t have a conscience.
Just Some Fuckhead
If it means I gotta get my hands dirty, I want no part of that. I’m comfortable with the effete Democratic party of the late ’80s and 90s. I actually think Al Gore looks better in pastels than earth tones, for what it’s worth.
taylormattd
But my understanding is that yelling angrily on Daily Kos about NEVER giving Olympic gold medalists tax breaks is the path to prosperity.
Mark S.
Mitt can turn this around. All he has to do is tap Paul Ryan as his VP and then talk endlessly about turning Medicare into a voucher system. Everyone will cream in their pants about how bold and serious it is. And then in the debates, Romney can chuckle and say “There you go again” and it will be morning in America again.
(You can see I’ve been reading a lot of wingnut masturbation material lately. Doug would love this one.)
Cassidy
WE’RE GOING STREAKING!
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
...now I try to be amused
It’s about time the people in charge figured out we won’t have good government until we destroy that party that is giving us bad government.
@kindness:
That goes double for independent voters, I suspect. If they had strong policy preferences they would be partisans.
Face
Glenn Kessler is frantically searching for his crayons and water-based paint to pen his next missive giving DougJ 16 pinocchios for being a scamp and an imp.
Rosalita
I’m still shocked that FOX actually reported on that poll…
Nemo_N
CBS News headline:
“Negative presidential campaign ads going to new extremes”
Keyword: “new”.
Cassidy
@Rosalita: FOX has already given up.
BGinCHI
@Just Some Fuckhead: I rate this comment 4 fuckheads.
You are back, my friend.
Punchy
But what does Sully think of Mic Jagger?
Ash Can
You can track the polls with the news headlines. Romney got a bump from the “You didn’t build that” farce, then promptly squandered it when he went to Europe and fell flat on his face. Moreover, every time he’d try to get up he’d get smacked back down by the Bain/tax-return one-two punch. If this keeps up, he’ll be trailing by double digits going into the election, and the people accounting for the numbers he does get in the polls will decide that it would be more fun to stay home and get shitfaced on election day.
In all seriousness, though, I have to wonder about one thing: We know that all his life Romney’s been pampered and looked up to. And I’m not even talking about his money, which really only aggravates this. I mean his dual role as bishop in the Mormon church and corporate CEO. He’s spent many years of his life being deferred to, no matter what he decides. No one questions, no one pushes back. His word goes, no matter what. We’ve talked about this here before. And the question remains, what happens when the campaign really heats up after the conventions are over and Romney really has to go head-to-head with Obama (debates, etc.)? And add to this the fact that Romney hasn’t exactly made friends among the press. I honestly think we could see at least one real emotional meltdown from Romney before election day. And then even his Mormon base would stay home and get shitfaced.
::orders several more cases of popcorn::
Lahru
I remember reading back before Obama won the election someone from Chicago was quoted. “He’s a very smart politician, so good in fact that he’ll cut his opponent off at the knees and make them belive they were born short”
Yeah, where’s the LIKE button.
BeefSupreme
The Democrats have finally decided to use steroids when competing in the All Drug Olympics.
General Stuck
And the kicker in these polls is even better. Seems a lot more people right now would rather identify themselves with the democrat party rather than the confederate one. So the wingers are fapping away at crooked polling for oversampling democrats. Even the Fox Poll, oh noes, there in on it also too!! What these morons don’t know, or won’t admit is that party ID weighting is part of the polling matrix itself. And almost all of them that give party ID weighting are going off the historical charts towards democrat ID. Republicans and firebaggers should unite and fight this scourge on purity, decency, and Olympian tax cheats.
It’s all got Peg Nooners in her cups with the high volt concern trolling on them meany Obots.
I can only speak for myself, I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days, before fucking the republicans.
cathyx
@Rosalita: Don’t be. The republican’s will spend even more money to advertize on their network now.
BGinCHI
From TPM:
Steve King?
DougJ
@Punchy:
That’s a really good question. I’m curious.
Just Some Fuckhead
Mitt and the halfwit need to hold a press conference and demand Obama release his science project from 10th grade physical science. Rumor has it .. rumor has it.. that he and a classmate animated the corpse of Karl Marx. The science project was so successful, Marx got a teaching gig at Punahou for the next two years until his beard became infested with silverfish whereupon they threw him away in the lake out back.
ETA: sorry, forgot to identify the halfwit as Donald Trump. But it shoulda been obvious.
Cassidy
@jrg: I’m an atheist, but go ahead and throw one of those in there for me.
Handy
Hell to the YES!
BGinCHI
@General Stuck: I’m not clicking on that harridan’s column, but is she paraphrasing the Big Lebowski in her title?
We believe in nothing Lebowski, nothing! Where is the money Lebowski!
Peggy’s next column: America Cuts Off Your Johnson.
Villago Delenda Est
@Wag:
That was never the problem.
The problem was the fucking Democratic Leadership Council Democrats who were busy trying to be Rethug Lite.
Harry Truman identified this type long ago.
Fuck Bill Clinton.
Water balloon
Is it the ads, or the relatively good jobs report last week? I’d say a little bit of both. Nobody liked Romney to begin with, And while reminding people that he’s a mixture of Gordon Gekko and John Kerry helps, as long as people don’t think we’re headed for a double dip recession, Obama will win.
dr. bloor
This, a million times. I’m not sure exactly when everyone on our side conflated “good governance” with “good politics,” but they’re decidedly separate entities, and you’ll never get to practice the former without playing the latter to Just Win, Baby.
4tehlulz
@jrg: Does he have a choice at this point after the Romneycare fiasco?
He has to prove to the base that he is tough on this sick and weak, and VP Ryan is the only real way he can make the teabaggers think he is.
DougJ
@Water balloon:
I’d also say a little of both.
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Kevin Drum approves of your post.
different-church-lady
True, but don’t forget Romney’s unforced errors as well.
Lojasmo
@jrg:
VP pick is going to be pawlempty. His face is all over the signs and the toobz.
rb
@elmo: Guilty Conscience Central Casting.
ROFL. But I’m afraid “guilty” and “conscience” assume facts not in evidence. I give it a 7 on approach, a 10 on execution.
Steve
Markos had it right. Being in the lead does not make the base complacent. Being in the lead makes the base energized and ready to fuck up some congressional races.
The Tragically Flip
I confess I’ve never looked into this in any detail, but is this true? Or was this just another Republican ratfuck to deligitimize JFK (who would have won even without Illinois in ’60 – he fucking took Texas for God’s sake)?
I know Chicago politics is notoriously corrupt, and Illinois has like 17 living former governors in prison or on parole, but ratfucking didn’t start with Rove.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
Personally, I’m a small of a woman’s back man, but hey, to each his own!
DougJ
@Steve:
Yup, exactly. Markos is smarter than people give him credit for.
Joey Maloney
@Ash Can:
You think team O’s debate prep will include how to respond if Romney loses his temper during a debate and throws an n-bomb?
I do.
rb
@BGinCHI: What John Kerry never did.
Right, but also his surrogates. Have the president’s back. I’m looking at you, congresspeople.
BGinCHI
@The Tragically Flip: It’s only two governors, smarty pants. Pat Quinn is still in office and won’t go to jail for a few years yet.
Now pipe down before Moose and Rocco come over and loosen the keys in your keyboard.
BeefSupreme
Also:
Cheat
(Strummer/Jones)
I GET VIOLENT WHEN I’M FUCKED UP
I GET SILENT WHEN I’M DRUGGED UP
WANT EXCITEMENT, DON’T GET NONE, I GO WILD
I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT
IF YOU PLAY THE GAME YOU GET NOTHING OUT OF IT
FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF TRY BEIN’ A GOODY GOODY
YOU BETTER CHEAT CHEAT
NO REASON TO PLAY FAIR
CHEAT CHEAT OR DON’T GET ANYWHERE
CHEAT CHEAT IF YOU CAN’T WIN
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING
IT’S BEYOND YOUR CONTROL, AN’ FRIDAY NIGHT’S A RUIN
IF YOU WANNA SURVIVE YOU BETTER LEARN HOW TO LIE
DON’T USE THE RULES
THEY’RE NOT FOR YOU, THEY’RE FOR THE FOOLS
AND YOU’RE A FOOL IF YOU DON’T KNOW THAT
SO USE THE RULE YOU STUPID FOOL
Violet
This, this, THIS! I need a fucking cigarette, this is so good. Give ’em hell, Barack! Kick ’em when they’re down. Grind them into dust. Then make them pay for the fucking dust bowl.
Culture of Truth
Uh, winning
Reid is a warlock with tiger blood. There I said it.
low-tech cyclist
Fuck, yes!
In the words of Manuel Garcia O’Kelly Davis from Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: “Do it, Mike, throw rocks at ’em! Damn it, big rocks! Hit ’em hard!”
Bulworth
Yeah but Dicky Morris has super secret info poll data showing Romney landslide, so there.
Villago Delenda Est
Tampa is going to be the clowning achievement in wingtard ZOMG we need to do something about this fucking Mormon.
I look forward to endless entertainment.
Cacti
In the era of the cold civil war, Obama is our General Grant. He takes the fight to the confederate party and all they can do is howl “unfair”. He’s even willing to use a surrogate for the scorched earth campaign, so I guess that would make Harry Reid our Uncle Billy Sherman.
Steve
@The Tragically Flip: Never proven, just the typical sort of thing that losers cling to.
Just Some Fuckhead
Hopefully, that will involve a sweating frantic Mitt stripping down in public and rubbing handfuls of cash money all over his naked body while crying and humming the Star Spangled Banner unevenly.
rb
@Face: I said it before, but I really can’t get over Kessler. It’s just so humiliating. “You say I shill for Mitt Romney, but you may have missed the time I gave him 7 pinocchios and a geppetto for claiming he was a real boy.”
If I ever wrote something like that for attribution the mortification would be so great I would snap out of existence.
KXB
It is amusing to see what outrages the DC press. Tough commercials by Obama brings about a lot of handwringing and statements of “Why is Obama doing this?” Yet, Romney drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in unidentified corporate cash – well, that just makes the press ask, “What is Obama doing wrong?” I have never seen as big a disconnect between what concerns the DC political press and what the rest of the country is concerned about.
But, in a nod towards journalists who actually do their jobs, Scott Pelley of CBS frequently does reports that focus on the people hurt by the Great Recession. He has done stories on homeless kids whose families are living in cars, folks waiting for days for free medical clinics, etc. Perhaps its because he did not group up in media circles that he still thinks that economic policy is to be measured by how it affects people, and not just Wall Street expectations.
Culture of Truth
If dead people can be retroactivley baptized then surely they can be retroactively registered to vote
Mark S.
@Bulworth:
Yup. Word on the street is that Dick has seen the real polls.
Hoodie
Another thing to consider is that there is a bigass economic recovery waiting to happen if the stranglehold of knuckledraggers can be broken, so it really pays off to be aggressive now, rather than, for example, in the first three years of Obama’s term. The Republicans have to be scared shitless, because it looks like there won’t be a double dip and they know that Obama can shave 2-3 points off the unemployment rate pretty quickly with housing picking up and if he can get government payrolls and infrastructure spending back on track. Then it will be the Obama Boom achieved by his legendary post-partisanship (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), and he will replace St. Ronnie in the mythology. The Chicago boys have a pretty good game plan.
Water balloon
@The Tragically Flip: it’s true, but not the whole story. Early in Harry Truman’s career, he was shocked to find out that his party was stuffing ballot boxes in his favor. His boss told him, in effect, “Don’t worry, the Republicans are doing the same thing.”
The Daleys were stuffing the ballot in Chicago, but the Republicans were doing the same thing in southern Illinois for Nixon, which is the real reason he didn’t even try to challenge the result. He knew any investigation would implicate him as much as it did Kennedy.
schrodinger's cat
@General Stuck: Just read the Noonan column, it is so incoherent. I predict next week we will see elbenty one columns about tone, from many in the so called liberal MSM.
amk
Is kevin drum in hospital cardiac care unit yet ?
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
My take: Mitt is starting to look unpresidential to a lot of people. A presidential candidate has to look/act the part. He’s got the hair, the suit and the jaw, and especially the right skin color. But the more people see him the more he looks like the salesman at a fly by night used car lot. Shifty and unreliable. That’s gonna take a lot of wind out of his sails, to mix metaphors.
Villago Delenda Est
@Water balloon:
“The dead are rising from their graves, and they’re VOTING REPUBLICAN!”
Hunter Gathers
I don’t know. I keep getting told that Republicans are ready to run through walls and over hot coals to vote for Mittens, that Obama looking to depress the turnout of the permanently angry white working class, that Obama is just too much of a divider to be re-elected and that UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH is going to crush Obama in the fall because it’s always 1980.
West Texan
I’ve been arguing for this since 2000. I think some of the DC Dems have finally figured out that there is no reasoning with what’s left of the GOOPers. You have to knock them down then step on their necks. That’s how FDR and HST did it. They understood that no matter how much we want to be able to use persuasion and logic to meet our goals, Americans don’t listen to people they believe are wimps. I wish that it weren’t so, but it is.
feebog
I’m going to quibble with this line DougJ. I don’t think any thing that Obama has put out could possibly be labeled “unfair”. None of the Obama team ads have been untrue, and when contrasted with the lying crap that team Romney has put out, it is astonishing that anyone would think so.
As for Reid and his little fishing expedition, how is it unfair to keep the Romney tax issue alive? Romney could rebut Reid’s second hand rumor very easily, but he won’t. And we all know there must be some very good reasons why he won’t. This may be a political elbow to the ribs, but hey, welcome to the big time.
Lastly, the recent PAC ad with Soptic (sp?) is likewise not “unfair”. All the facts in that ad are accurate. Would this guys wife have lived if he had kept his job and their health care? Don’t know, but one thing is certain, she didn’t have the health care, and was diagnosed with stage four cancer, when it was too late. Facts, they have a well known liberal bias.
So fuck this shit about how “unfair” Obama and the Dems have been to rMoney. It is nothing compared to the Willie Hortons and swift boat smears of the past. Nothing.
Culture of Truth
I see it more like Obama is Lincoln while Reid is Grant. Sherman is.. um.. maybe Pelosi is Grant and Reid is Sherman then.
FlipYrWhig
@KXB: They really, really love the “negative ads” story. I guess because it’s so easy: montage of clips, plug in Doris Kearns Goodwin or Kathleen Hall Jamison saying something about the past, then end on a rueful note about how the people don’t like it when the candidates are big meanie-heads.
General Stuck
@schrodinger’s cat:
Gin filtered stream of unconsciousness
japa21
And with all this, I still believe that the Obama camp has some even more damaging stuff in store for September and October.
As I have said before, everything so far is to create a ceiling for Romney. No I think it is even more devious than that. It is to create an atmosphere leading into the republican convention where they will actually be pleading to the far right base (which is much crazier than it was even in 2008) to rescue them. All that will do is expose the Republicans even more as the party of beyond craziness.
Obama and his campaign know that his winning the WH again is only a creation of a dam to prevent any more flooding. They know that it is critical to keep the Senate and win back the House and to do that they need to delegitimize the entire Republican Party. Everything up to now has been to create that scenario.
September and October will be fun to watch.
Jay C
Not that these sort of poll results are anything but supremely gratifying — BUT…
Fox and the rest of the Wingnut Wurlitzer are good for very little: but quite good at manipulating the opinions of their “base”: I’m just wondering if the all the “Obama leading” gush isn’t just another rat*fuck attempt: i.e., push the notion of Romney and the GOP as trailing badly now; then, post-Convention, suddenly “discvover” a major 10-point poll bounce or whatever to fire up the troops and try to get the Elephants back in the game with a new “surge” narrative.
Of course, this does have the drawback of making the Wurlitzer look even less credible (if that’s possible) with the reality-based universe if their BS isn’t backed up by at least some congruence with the rest of the media: but if the latest poll numbers are anything near accurate, they’re going to be desperate by October.
Cassidy
@feebog: He didn’t say it was unfair. He said he’s tired of the hand-wringers who sy it is.
pseudonymous in nc
@KXB:
Yeah, but he always ends them with a bullshit Uplifting Moment™, with a little kid living in a car saying “I still believe in the American dream” rather than asking politicians what the fuck they’re going to do about it.
Amir Khalid
@BGinCHI:
From the beginning, his campaign’s most important criterion has been that Mitt’s running mate must not upstage him. Now Mitt himself lists three things he wants in a running mate — strength of character, vision for the country, the ability to add to the political discourse about the direction of the country — that Mitt himself lacks, as we have been seeing. A running mate who had these thins couldn’t avoid upstaging Mitt.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Hoodie: lolwut?
El Cid
All the conservatives I know who hate, hate Obama apparently all now hate Mitt Romney.
BGinCHI
@Amir Khalid: He might as well pick Tag or Tad or Spaz or one of his other sons.
BGinCHI
@El Cid: It’s terrific how generous conservatives are with their hate.
Hating is caring. /wingnut
flukebucket
Poor Mitt. He is in so over his head.
Drown that bastard and any and everything and everybody else allied with him!
Steve
I think some of the contentious elections of our nation’s past, like the Adams/Jefferson brawl of 1800, should be required reading in history class. The idea that there’s something uniquely toxic or dishonest about today’s elections is laughable. In fact, while the level of hatred directed at Obama blows my mind sometimes, I’m not sure there’s a single thing in the mix that is unprecedented.
Villago Delenda Est
“Isn’t it time for Romney to come clean?”
It’s been time for this for a very long time.
But he can’t.
Because it’s not clean. It’s as dirty as all hell. There is shit there piled on top of huge mounds of shit.
He CANNOT release his taxes to make the rumors go away, because the rumors are MILD compared to what’s in the taxes.
UncommonSense
We went to the moon, too. The moon.
Meanwhile, conservatives have decided space exploration isn’t worth the money.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
They’re “good Christians”.
They hate, hate, and hate.
That’s what “good Christians” do!
Davis X. Machina
@Culture of Truth:
Great. Another Illinois statehouse hack, with a thin Congressional resume, and a dubious attachment to civil liberties and basic Constitutional rights, running on his biography.
Just what this country needs in a crisis.
Montysano
@Ash Can:
Unless Romney is truly clueless, the prospect of standing on a debate stage with Obama should be the stuff of nightmares.
Mnemosyne
@Hoodie:
That’s why it drives me nuts when people on the left latch onto Obama’s expressed admiration for Reagan as somehow being admiration for Reagan’s policies when it’s pretty clearly admiration for Reagan’s ability to get people to buy into his ideology even when there are massive layoffs, numerous tax hikes, etc.
If Obama is able to become the liberal Reagan — that is, the guy who can sell liberal policies with a smile and make them mainstream the way Reagan made the religious Right and “tax rebels” mainstream — then we’ll be well on our way to turning the Titanic around.
KXB
@pseudonymous in nc:
For me, the strength of the stories is the absence of politicians. If a politician appears, I already discount what he/she is saying to whatever her backers instruct them to say. Maybe it’s cause that 40 is not too far off, but so many of these concerns and questions seem to have been asked before and remain unanswered. But, I do know that it is easier to address the questions with a growing economy, and if Obama can start showing how the economy was growing steadily until the Tea Party came to town, he will set the economic debate on his terms.
Villago Delenda Est
@Montysano:
Given that Rmoney fired a debate coach who improved his performance, apparently because the man was perceived as upstaging him, yes, he’s truly clueless. Because this shit isn’t on a spread sheet, so it’s outside of Rmoney’s field of competence.
MikeJ
@Villago Delenda Est:
What’s hilarious is that the republicans have been screaming about about vetting Obama, saying he was never vetted in the 2008 election. And then they pick a nominee who can’t release what every other candidate has released. They don’t seem to understand the meaning of simple words.
Catsy
I get the historical context behind this and I’m completely on board with the rest of the post. But if this is an expression of even tacit approval for vote fraud, no way.
I am all in favor of moving the line so that we actually fight to defeat the nihilistic, sociopathic domestic enemies that make up the bulk of the Republican Party without having our hands tied behind our backs. Call them out for what they are, and get a bit dirty if we have to. But there has to be a line. Mine is drawn at violence, lawbreaking and delegitimizing the very system we’re trying to save.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Just as Reagan was the “conservative” FDR.
Exactly.
WereBear
If we cut off one of its heads it will only grow a new one. We must chop all of them off, as Greek mythology tells us.
That’s the benefit of a liberal arts education, wingnuts.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Just Some Fuckhead: Grade A snark. Luckily, years of Internet abuse have tempered my inclination to spit my coffee all over my keyboard and screen.
WaterGirl
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s what I believe, too, Romney will stand there and watch his campaign go down in flames, but the alternative is even worse, so he will do nothing.
Romney will do nothing and hope the storm passes, hoping he can cut his losses on the presidential bid & go back to his position of high status as a businessman and a mormon bishop.
Some bells cannot be un-rung, and I hope this is one of them.
Jay C
@Montysano:
If, by debate time, Romney is still trailing the President by any significant percentage, the “nightmare” of the debates will probably be alleviated by the assurance that the “MSM” will be in the tank for him as much as ever/always, and that he will be able to count on a non-trivial level of pro-GOP message manipulation to salvage anything short of a meltdown.
Remember the first Bush-Kerry debate in 2004? Kerry coming across as cool, calm and Presidential: Dubya mumbling and stumbling like the village idiot he was? Yet we see how that worked out…
Culture of Truth
The media loves the narrative – GOP = tough daddies Dems = weak mommies that almost no power on earth or above will move them from it, except in the dog bites man version where Dems are suddenly mean and HW Bush and Romney are ‘wimps’
But what they really, REALLY love are winners – if for no other reason than they are desperate sit at the cool kids table in the lunchroom. They despise weakness, and once you win and get an airport named after you they don’t care.
Hell, the betlway media still loves Nixon more than Carter, at least Nixon bombed people and got reelected.
nastybrutishntall
@General Stuck: motherfickucking like, dude. you got me all aflutter.
Nemo_N
@El Cid:
I assume it’s the result of seeing Romney as a wimp, not some upgrade in their opinion of Obama (I usually assume conservatives have a very teenage way to like and hate people).
Seanly
@Lojasmo:
The only white guy in the bunch who could make Romney exciting? And that’s not a compliment to Romney…
Biden will chew him up in the VP debate and just throw in a gaffe as a little thank-you.
I wonder if TPaw will wink at the camera?
Shawn in ShowMe
@Water balloon:
Until Romney shows his taxes, the beatings will continue. And just when you thought wingnut tears couldn’t taste more delicious, Queen Coulter savages Romney on Fox for not keeping the help in line. For the Obama campaign, this ain’t about just defeating Romney at the top of ticket. They want to annihilate him.
An Obama presidential victory is only half of the battle. The White House wants the Congress back and they’re going to have to demoralize the GOP rank and file to get it. The circular firing squad being led by Coulter, Rush and Erickson is certainly a good start.
Just Some Fuckhead
@El Cid:
I’ve got two types of conservative friends. The glibtards despise Romney and say they won’t vote for him but they will, particularly in a close election. Glibtards, being Feudalists, are very unhappy about the servant being in the manor house.
The other type is the Christian evangelical. They’ve finally started tepidly indicating their support of Romney but they’re embarrassed by it, particularly in light of their years-long jihad against any candidate who isn’t a born-again-I-just-praise-God-we-got-a-man-in-the-White-House-who-gets-on-his-knees-and-prays REAL CHRISTIAN(TM).
I’m fucking with the second type pretty hard these days. As soon as Romney gets the crown at the convention, I’ll be saying “I honestly thought us godless secular libs would nominate the first polytheist. I want to thank my good Christian friends for nominating a candidate that gets on his knees and prays to gods, all of them.”
Culture of Truth
Anybody can see that right now Romney is going down. His last shot is a series of powerful, positive uplifting hope and change ads coupled with a stellar debate performance. He okay in the GOP primary debates, especially toward the end, but he was never great and I bet he’s rusty.
His team, which has not distinguished itself thus far, had better prep the hell out of him, cause they are truly his last shot.
Steve
@Jay C: Well, Bush did better in the other debates. Reagan was horrible in the first debate with Mondale, too.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
IIRC, the key was to cauterize each neck before it had a chance to regrow. I guess the torches will be worth something even if the pitchforks aren’t. Also, too, ISTR that it was actually Heracles’s
gay lovercharioteer who did the cauterizing, so teamwork can be important. So don’t be dissing Harry Reid when he’s lending a hand to the campaign.Mark S.
You think the media is terrified of a snoozer election? Here’s the Atlantic with “Obama is Ahead, But is He Winning?”
“Slightly better” is winning the Electoral College by a hundred votes. And was Karl Rove really the best you could do?
Just Some Fuckhead
@danah gaz (fka gaz): Did a couple more from the new meme:
Here
And here
Bostondreams
Had a conversation with my right-leaning Republican dad last night. Stunned me when he said he was voting for Obama. He doesn’t like Obama that much, but finds Romney to be an utter fraud and liar.
Naturally, we had a big argument over Bain after that nice moment. But small battles and all that. I hope he is a bellwether…
amk
@Jay C: The msm tried that with that old geezer (it’s good news for mcccain) in 2008 when their ‘audience meter’ showed that chicago pol won the debates. So despite their serious ass kissing of mittbot, not gonna happen. Obama is not kerry.
Villago Delenda Est
@UncommonSense:
This is yet another illustration of the lack of vision of “conservatives.”
The technology we’re using, right now, to exchange these words, is a spinoff of the Apollo Program.
An entire major sector of the economy is the result of “wasteful government spending” in the 1960s.
Norquist is a trust fund idiot. The best use of him is fertilizer.
taylormattd
@Steve: Markos also thinks Daily Kos is “the base”
LanceThruster
RomneyCorp – “We’ve Got Your Future Under Control.”
Xecky Gilchrist
@japa21: And with all this, I still believe that the Obama camp has some even more damaging stuff in store for September and October.
Agreed – I’m agog to find out what it is. Solid evidence of actual criminal behavior, maybe? Even if it were from a long time ago it would be so fun to hear “but the statute of limitations has passed” as a Romney campaign slogan.
dr. bloor
@Mark S.: I refused to read past the headline on that. They really trotted out Karl “I’ve got the math” Rove for the counterargument? Dick Morris wouldn’t give them a quote?
taylormattd
@DougJ: No he’s not, he’s a fucking moron.
Everyone on the planet understands it is good to have the base fired up.
Markos, however, believes firing the base up requires appearing at Netroots Nation, screaming red-faced at Joe Lieberman, and signing Jane Hamsher’s latest online pledge.
Steve
@taylormattd: Well, the Howard Dean crowd does in fact provide a lot of activist energy for Obama’s campaign, just like in 2008. That’s hardly the entire base, though. Labor is a critical element as always, and it sounds like they’re extremely energized as well.
If you think Markos doesn’t consider Labor (among others, but let’s take just that one) a really big part of the Democratic base, you’re going to need to back that up with something.
Hal
But he ran on hope and change, and now he’s being a big ol meanie. Why oh why won’t Obama just let Romney win this election?
I swear some Dems would be happier with Obama grinning and bearing the attacks from the right, even if it meant losing the election, than having Obama be willing to open a can of whoop ass on Romney. If John Kerry had done this, he might have won in 2004.
Amir Khalid
@Culture of Truth:
If Mitt did okay in the primary debates, it was only against feeble opposition. And then only with the help of that debate coach, whose good work was rewarded with the sack.
Obama will not be a feeble opponent. Mitt’s debate prep team will be well aware of how their boss rewards good work.
JCT
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I’ve been amazed by their ranting. Look, they may be manipulative dreadful people, but they are not stupid. How does this advance their agenda? Unless of course, their “agenda” is simply keep Obama in the WH so that they can rake in money for the next 4 years by complaining about him. This is likely what they are doing but the cynicism is truly breathtaking.
LanceThruster
@Steve:
OT, I loved seeing Howard Dean on MSNBC telling a prevaricating Dan Senor, “The hell it is…the hell it is!” as he challenged the dirty, rotten liar’s spew.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Poor Romney, he just can’t live down his dark past of helping the poor get health care. If it wasn’t for that flaw he would be the total rich prick the Right was dreaming of.
Southern Beale
That is great news, indeed!
More good news on my weekly round-up known as Good News Friday, with a bonus: super cool never-before heard John Lennon interview.
Brian R.
Late to the party, but I just wanted to add an amen. Fucking great.
kay
I would just like to mention that all the while there has been a national media campaign and national campaign strategists there has also been an absolute army of organizers working in-county talking to individual voters. Paid people, although they aren’t paid all that much. That’s been going on since at least March, completely under pundit-radar.
Romney has made no such effort. He is just now putting people on the ground. I think that fits with his entire world-view, where managers and money people matter, and lower-level workers don’t contribute to the success of any enterprise in any way, where he thinks he can just drop ads on swing states from 30,000 feet and thus control the narrative and he dismisses the importance of actually hiring people to camp in these counties and speak with voters face to face.
If he thinks he can hire a big batch of temps to helicopter into these swing state counties after the convention, and he seems to, that all by itself says something about how he values WORK and WORKERS, and, not incidentally, VOTERS.
That’s a management style, and it’s one we’re all too familiar with, where people at the top are valued; “geniuses”, and people at the bottom are interchangeable, last-minute, an after-thought.
I don’t know how much the organizers influenced the swing state numbers but Obama hired them so he must think that the lowest level worker is essential to any success he may have. That’s a management style, too, and it’s much different than Mitt Romney’s.
MikeBoyScout
If you listen you can hear the panic flop sweat dripping on the keyboards of the wingnut bloggers and their psycho commenters.
LanceThruster
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This needs to bite him in the ass also, too —
http://foolmoon.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/337209/1.html
Culture of Truth
@Amir Khalid: Well it’s not high praise. If someone asks me, how was that meal? and I say, “okay” it means I didn’t like it.
Trinity
yes. Yes. YES.
Moar please. kthnxbai!
MikeJ
@Culture of Truth:
He fired his coach that was too good at his job.
redshirt
The debates are going to be great fun. I wonder what percentage of Rmoney’s staff are true Believers, and thus think Obama’s an empty suit and not smart and TELEPROMPTERS! etc?
I’m sure they’re represented. And if in big enough numbers, they might go into the first debate thinking that’s where they’ll shine brightest…
Only to be utterly crushed.
Culture of Truth
The GOP firing squad is not so difficult to explain. If a Democrat was running such an inept campaign there would be plenty of criticism from the left. Heck, there is anyway.
Steve LaBonne
@JCT: That, and in true Tammany fashion the wingnuts would rather lose an election than lose control of the Republican Party.
quannlace
Re: the convention.
You know when they officially ‘introduce’ the candidate? Before hand they run that photo montage/life story film. Wondering just how that’s gonna go. Every segment, any of the supposed ‘highlights’ of Romney’s life will just bring up awkward associations. Romney as businessman? Bain, vulture capitalism. hidden tax returns.
Governor of Mass? Romneycare!
Savior of the Olympics? Just rerun his comments from London.
Todd
Awesome newsbit today.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/09/1118397/-David-Barton-subject-of-scathing-NPR-piece-and-has-his-latest-book-taken-off-shelves
Alex S.
What’s special about these polls is that FINALLY the national polls are in line with the state polls. Obama has been ahead in almost all Ohio, Nevada and New Mexico polls, and in most of Florida and Virginia polls. Still, the Rasmussen and Gallup daily trackers had the race almost tied – probably because their polling schedule excludes too many cell phones, shift workers and young families. If Obama is ahead in almost all of the states he won in 2008, he should be ahead in the national polls by a similar margin as well.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
And I think they’ll have a hard time preparing him for what’s actually going to happen in the debates. Obama isn’t just going to be a stronger debater than any of Mitt’s primary opponents. He’s also going to be getting in digs against Mitt’s personal insecurities every time he gets a chance. How do you coach an insecure guy like Mitt to let that go and focus on the issues? Mitt may act like a robot sometimes, but I’m guessing he completely loses his cool in the face of Obama’s needling.
Cassidy
@Villago Delenda Est:
Be careful. Some folks will get the vapors.
Culture of Truth
Obama will do some needling, no doubt, but here’s how I expect the debates to go down. Romney will talk to Obama, and Obama will talk to the audience.
Steve
@kay: Back a few cycles ago when we used to talk about the “50-state strategy,” it wasn’t just about nominating a candidate in every district, although that’s nice of course. It was about building the kind of infrastructure where the Democrats would have a presence competing for votes all over the place, even in areas traditionally considered hostile to Democrats. You can’t just parachute in every four years and meet everybody for the first time, we would say.
Obama and his team got this in 2008 and it was really something to see. I thought a big part of it was tapping into the local energy, and not just having a top-down campaign that throws everything away the day after the election. If you have a group of Obama supporters in Idaho, the thinking went, why not support their efforts to open up a local office and talk to people? Who cares if the Idaho caucuses don’t happen for a few months?
Most candidates and their campaign staffs don’t have the confidence to empower anyone further down the food chain; they want to run everything themselves. If you think about it, it’s pretty odd behavior from a Marxist who just looooves him some central planning, but there you have it.
Kane
I have no doubt that the TeamObama ads and hammering Romney on Bain and taxes have been effective and have had a role in building on President Obama’s lead over Romney. But Obama didn’t build that lead on his own. Romney helped.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat:
The MSM serve their masters.
Which ain’t us. Or the truth.
taylormattd
@Steve: Two things: First, the “Howard Dean” crowd and the current make up of left blog denizens are not the same at all. Many of us former Deaniacs understand that the 200 white men posting on Daily Kos are not “the base”. Second, I’m not sure why you believe I’m saying kossacks reject labor. I’m not.
Tone In DC
@Just Some Fuckhead:
LULz.
Obama’s cience project got an A, waaaay back in the ’70s. Of course, wingnut heads will continue to asplode, just cuz of the grade.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore: John McCain did lose his composure a time or two in the 2008 debates, as I recall — like when he pointed at Obama and called him “that one”. Do you think Mitt will likewise lose his rag, or will he just blue-screen several times on live TV?
cckids
@Water balloon: Yep. I saw on both CNN & MSNBC yesterday, poll results showing Romney’s unfavorables climbing fast. Its deja vu all over again – the more people see Romney, the less they like him.
Republicans tried keeping Palin away from the press last time because she was so dim & mean. Will be interesting seeing if they try to keep their candidate away from everyone just to keep the dislike under control.
Just Some Fuckhead
@taylormattd: We get it, you don’t like KOS. You say it every chance you get.
Hey everyone, taylormattd doesn’t like Markos Moulitsas.
Was there any other takeaways or is that about it?
Redshift
@Lojasmo:
Man, I hope so. Nate Silver did a recent post on the electoral effect of VP picks, and Pawlenty was one of the few who actually hurts Romney’s chances of winning both his home state and the overall election.
Roger Moore
@Culture of Truth:
Clarified.
@Steve:
The other thing about the 50 state strategy is that it ties into the whole “people want to vote for a winner” angle. Going after votes everywhere, even places where you’ve traditionally had no chance, speaks to your confidence, and that confidence is contagious. It’s easier to get over inertia and get yourself to the polls when your party hasn’t written your district off.
There was some discussion about this yesterday WRT Obama campaigning in heavily Republican parts of Colorado. The point was that the state as a whole is close, so every vote counts. Rather than writing off some parts of the state as a loss, Obama was going their and trying to fire up his voters. Maybe he won’t win Colorado Springs, but losing there 30-70 instead of 20-80 may be the difference between winning and losing the state. The 50 state strategy- or maybe the 435 district strategy- is partly about applying that same idea.
Todd
@Amir Khalid:
Total blue screen. The guy has never faced serious rhetorical challenge delivered to his face. Also, I’ve perceived that he’s got a bit of a stammer which will come out when he is most at stress.
His stress point comes whenever somebody isn’t saying “yes, boss. You’re the greatest, smartest man ever, boss”.
kay
@Steve:
It really is two different ways of running a business. We’re meeting with yet another Obama organizer Monday, and this county is 60/40 GOP. I can’t keep their names straight. They have this elaborate organizational structure that they all understand: “she is my boss, so you can call her but I can’t, but I am his boss, so I will call him”
I saw one of them I have come to know at a Biden event and he had been promoted. I knew this because all of a sudden he was wearing a suit, which I teased him about, and I found out he was running that event. I had seen him six months prior in this county, ya know, back in the day when he was an underling, and he was wearing flip flops and shorts and I was paying for his meal at Wendys. Now he’s a big shot :)
AnotherBruce
Beautifully said Doug, why not be proud to be a liberal? Why not own the legacy of the greatest President of the 20th century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
Tone In DC
@BGinCHI:
Moar LULz.
eemom
OT, but omg! Even The Onion‘s gone all Jon Stewart-Kevin Drum-false equivalence on our asses.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know what Mitt will do in the debates, but I’m betting that trying to throw him off his game is part of Obama’s debating strategy. It’s not a coincidence that Obama’s opponents seem to melt down on cue; he knows how to provoke those meltdowns. Mitt’s just a couple of nudges from a memorably terrible debate performance.
Steve
Pawlenty seems fairly plausible, since he at least brings some of that middle-class credibility which Romney completely lacks. Although I don’t think he brings much else.
maurinsky
@Nemo_N:
It’s new because the Dems are fighting back. About time!
eric
@Just Some Fuckhead: the dems had kennedy…. ;)
Liberty60
@BGinCHI:
Sample Noonan:
Yes, Mitt. Follow this woman’s advice, and proudly declare yourself to be Romney Hood.
Please, please!
MikeJ
@eemom: He couldn’t have been working for Bain in 1996 when the guy from other commercial lost his job, because he was too busy in Colorado killing children.
Davis X. Machina
@Steve: Romney’s down 6-10% in Minnesota, and I don’t think a VP choice has ever swung a state that much. 2-3% seems typical.
There may be other reasons to pick TPaw, but that one seems a bit of a reach.
liberal
@eemom:
Even the gods fail us sometimes.
cckids
@Amir Khalid:
True. On Morning Joe this a.m., Mika & Joe were hot & heavy for Christie as VP, ’cause he’s so tough. One of the other bobbleheads mentioned that Christie is known for having angry meltdowns, and that this might not be such a good thing. M & J couldn’t believe that ANYONE would not be actually turned on by such a display. I mean, who doesn’t want the possible VP of the USA screaming at a constituent, especially one who asks a “rude” question like “where do your kids go to school?”
Watching them was like a window into an alternate cultural reality.
ps, in my defense, I fell asleep on the couch with the Olympics & woke up to this. I wasn’t deliberately “watching” it.
danielx
@BGinCHI:
Let me guess: animatronic Ronald Reagan.
Would probably be more lifelike than Willard, and certainly have more charm.
MikeJ
@Steve: I’d be pretty happy with Pawlenty. We could have a big national conversation on fixing our crumbling infrastructure. Teamed with how many people it would put to work.
liberal
@Kane:
LOL
amk
Charles Pierce weighs in on Obama presidency and the raw deal he got from the day he got elected.
amk
@Kane: Nicely done.
Kane
Sensing certain defeat and desperate for a game change, the GOP presidential nominee selects an unqualified running mate in hope that the choice will excite the base.
Now where have I heard that before?
rikyrah
The Prudential Building is not playing with Willard.
Thoughtcrime
@danielx:
Just embed a false memory in the Romlicant so it’ll believe it was already president. Then retire it to the Magic Kingdom’s Hall of Presidents. It’ll fit right in.
liberal
@Culture of Truth:
No, Romney’s best shot is some kind of unexpected economic shot that takes us from our nominal recovery and throws us back into recession.
I don’t think it’s that likely, but …
rb
@Culture of Truth: But what they really, REALLY love are winners … at least Nixon bombed people
No shit. We are a proud people, but in many ways a fucked up one, too. And the pundit class is all our weird authority-worshiping shit laid bare, with stupid animations and blinking lights.
liberal
@Just Some Fuckhead:
NB: Christians are polytheists too, unless you buy into the “1 = 3” scam.
22over7
@kay:
Someone on this fine blog said that Romney’s plan is to use the LDS church members for his volunteers. That should make people warm up to him.
liberal
@Jay C:
Yeah, that was pretty amazing.
Thoughtcrime
@DougJ:
Markos’ stated aim is to elected more and better Democrats so his analysis is hardly objective. But he’s no dummy.
Cassidy
@liberal: Don’t dismiss the notion that our Galtian Overlords would deliberately tank the economy just for that reason. They have money; they’ll be fine.
quannlace
Guaranteed that Romney will attempt some kind of Reaganesque ‘There you go again’ kind of comment; and it’ll fall completely flat.
Will Reks
@AnotherBruce:
Exactly.. I don’t know why the Democrats don’t run as the party that created social security and medicare every election cycle. The people should know which party has been trying to kill those programs since the beginning.
Captain C
@Bulworth: Did he get that info from a hooker’s toes? Just askin’.
LanceThruster
@danielx:
And even setup under a leaky roof, would short circuit less often or spectacularly than the Mittronic one.
Chris
@The Tragically Flip:
Is it really that much more corrupt than any other average city? The Daley machine doesn’t seem that different from all the other machines operating nationwide on both sides of the aisle during the same era.
Roger Moore
@liberal:
The biggest problem with that scenario, at least for Romney, is that the candidates will be expected to respond to this situation as it’s happening. I sincerely doubt that Mittens in
disaster capitalistcrisis mode is going to be reassuring to the average voter.Origuy
John Sununu called President Obama a wuss. When does the civil discourse start?
kay
@22over7:
Right, so I’ve been looking for them because I read the same comment you did. Given that my entire understanding of the LDS church comes from Big Love, and given that we’re equating campaign work with a mission, do Mormon women go on mission, or just the men? Are we looking for men and women to show up or just men?
Elizabelle
@cckids:
Sounds like MoJoe pines for the “daddy party”, never mind that Daddy can’t govern, (doesn’t really care about doing so), and isn’t smart enough to assess the actual conditions and possible improvements.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
Something like this actually happened in 2008, and McCain’s hapless flailing in the face of the financial crisis was what sank his candidacy for a lot of people.
Chris
@Steve:
I’ve said this here before, but I think it’s the opposite: the era of good, bipartisan governance that we all look back to fondly is what’s “unique,” and the current Cold Civil War setup is how we usually work.
The happy bipartisan era lasted from 1941 to 1968, and that’s me being as generous as possible and ignoring a lot of rumbling under the surface of the “liberal consensus” (plus the brief return to New Deal era polarization right after World War Two). Future historians will remember it as a 20th century version of the Era Of Good Feelings, with as little impact on the nation’s long-term unity.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
I wonder how many of them realize this. Even if they saw him do a good job in the 2008 debates, and again when he walked into the Fox News room without a teleprompter, they promptly lock it away and go back to talking about how he can’t say anything without a teleprompter. Wouldn’t be surprised if Mittens’ campaign had drunk their own kool aid, especially if he keeps firing all the people who actually know what they’re doing.
Catsy
@liberal:
I always enjoy needling avowed Satanists by referring to them as Christians. After all, they’re worshipping a power in the Christian pantheon…
22over7
@kay:
Yeah, I have no idea. It sounds ludicrous, right? But, like you, I’ve been looking in vain for a field office, a lawn sign, anything to indicate that Romney has a presence in my state. So far, I’ve seen a grand total of ONE bumper sticker.
It’s baffling.
schrodinger's cat
@22over7: Will they go around knocking on doors, wearing their missionary work uniform? Yeah, that should be real popular.
Chris
@kay:
Exactly. Top-down is the Republican way of doing things and even more so Romney’s way.
@22over7:
How red is your state? I’m just wondering.
Steve
@Chris: I was talking about campaigning, as opposed to governance.
Chris
@Chris:
Just to add to this –
I finally broke down last Christmas and read David McCullough’s book on Harry Truman, and there’s a section in it where Truman bewilderingly talks about Republican beliefs and says “they really do think money trickles down from the top,” as if all of the serfs actually accumulating it for them were just charity cases and the guy at the top was just conjuring all the cash out of thin air.
You find from the book that politics has changed a lot, but a lot of the underlying debates are the same, right down to the term “trickle down” and Republicans’ heartfelt belief in it.
Chris
@Chris:
Correction noted. And yeah, in that case, even the legendary bipartisan era was no different from today.
LanceThruster
LDS q: If a Mormon has been shown not to have fully tithed at some point, do they owe back tithes? Or were they just not a Mormon in good standing during that period that they didn’t cough up their 10%? Would that have repercussions like when you let your auto insurance lapse and it affects your later rate?
22over7
@Chris:
Chris, I’m in New Mexico, a reliably blue state with a republican governor who is slated to speechify at the convenation. I did think that perhaps because my state has so few electoral votes, it just isn’t worth the effort. But I’ve lived here through many elections, and the candidates usually make SOME kind of effort. I was curious to hear from other states.
kay
@22over7:
They put a field office in Wood County Ohio, which is a really important swing county for both candidates. I would think it’s somewhere Romney would do well (if I thought he could do well anywhere).
I just think that if he’s ignoring places like MY county, where he has to run up huge margins, and Obama is NOT ignoring places like my county (Obama will not win this county) that indicates some arrogance and assumptions on Romney’s part. He must feel he has the white working class base locked down, or he’s going to run it up in swing counties, or something.
To me it again goes to different management styles. Obama takes nothing for granted. I personally think people that DO take things for granted, as a “given”, as their “due”, I think that has to do with privilege.
MikeJ
@kay:
If you were running a republican campaign you’d be thrilled if you had a candidate who could form a sentence without talking about stickin’ it to the [ethnic group]. Where are you going to find man on the street rank and file Republicans who can do that?
Violet
@22over7:
Romney’s got a presence in my state. I live in a red state, but in a blue-ish area within that state. However, I drive to red areas on a regular basis. In my neighborhood I’ve seen more Romney signs and bumper stickers than Obama signs and stickers. Driving around, I’d say it’s about 50-50. Today I saw a “Nope 2012” sticker, with the Obama logo.
Does this mean Romney’s got a presence in red states? Or are people just buying stickers off his website?
elaine benes
@22over7:
Same here. The one Romney bumpersticker I’ve seen was on a mini van parked in front of a local LDS building.
Violet
@elaine benes: The Romney bumper stickers I see are usually on expensive vehicles–the Lexus SUV, the Mercedes convertible, and the very new, very big truck. Frequently there will be more than one sticker–yesterday one vehicle had one basic Romney sticker and another slamming Obama.
SiubhanDuinne
@Seanly:
Aww. I just love this.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@22over7:
Since we’re doing Romney-sticker sightings… here in MA, our former governor’s supporters seem to have a bimodal distribution.
The Romney stickers are either on high-end cars (Lexus and Acura, mostly)… or on really beat-up old cars, often accompanied by the notorious jeebus fish. Pickup drivers seem fond of the Calvin-wizzing-on-Obama’s-name motif.
Classy, sophisticated folks we have here.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
There was the magnificent moment when McCain told Letterman that he had to take a rain check on the appearance to rush back to DC because the economy was “cratering”.
Then Letterman shows McCain travelling back to DC via Katie Couric’s desk.
metricpenny
Great post but the results of these recent polls are being called into question because 5 out of 4 likely voters polled in Illinois chose President Obama.
Just joshing. Loves it!
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I don’t think that’s really true. Bush had a better ground game than Kerry did, which is a big part of what won the election for him in 2004. The Evangelicals have been a key part of the Republican ground game, which is what’s given them so much power in the party. If the Evangelicals are tepid in their support for Mitt, that can hurt him a lot not just in directly lost votes but also in reduced local campaigning. I think the Mormons are going to have a hard time making up for that, even if they turn out in force for him.
schrodinger's cat
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: I live in MA too, and I have only seen one Romney yard sign, outside a run down house.
ETA: Mitty is going to lose Massachusetts in double digits.
Roger Moore
@kay:
If he’s not fighting for every vote in every district in a swing state, he’s courting disaster. Every vote is going to tell. If the state as a whole is going to be close, he needs to run up the margin in his strongholds, try to limit his losses in Obama’s, and try to swing close districts his way.
El Cid
I’m really, really hoping for a total Romney wig-out in the debates.
I also really, really hope that Republicans truly believe Obama to be the teleprompter-reading, grade-faking dumbass they talk about him being.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@LanceThruster: Depends. If someone didn’t pay tithing for a while, but didn’t lie about it, they’d be fine. There’s a sort of “reckoning” you do with your bishop at the end of each year, where you declare if you paid your tithing in full. If you just admit you didn’t, you might go into a temporary situation of not using the temple or other things until you get back on track. However, if you tell the bishop that you paid full tithing, doing temple work and other things you’re not supposed to do without paying tithing, and you didn’t fully pay and its discovered, then the reprocussions can be more heavy handed. I doubt you’d ever be really harshly punished (excommunicated, disfellowshiped, etc), but you’d probably be punished not to take the sacrement or some other temporary hold on your church assignments.
LanceThruster
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
Thx for the details.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Okay true, although I’d add that the nice thing about fundiegelicals is that if you’ve got the pastor, you’ve got the congregation – makes it a lot easier for the guys at the top to get their votes that way.
Patricia Kayden
The Repub Lt Gov of Virginia was on NPR whining about how President Obama’s ads are so mean spirited and attack Romneybot 2.0 on a personal level.
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/
Cry me a river!! Haven’t the Repubs done nothing but scream, “Socialist, Kenyan, Communist, Anti-white Racist, Radical, Usurper, Foreigner, Thug” at President Obama for the last 4 years straight?
Please!
Turgidson
@Todd:
Actually, McCain gave it to him pretty good a couple times in 2008 and Romney didn’t hold up well. Obama’s digs will be more subtle but also more meaningful. Romney’s so aloof he might not even realize he’s being roasted, but if he does…geez, he might even say “how dare you talk to me like that, boy?” right on national TV.
dance around in your bones
I don’t know – every time I see LDS church I see LSD church.
Which prolly would be far better.
P.S. Totally anecdotal, but I have known some Mormon families in my time and though they did not partake of the alcohol, they were heavily into the RX meds. Of the speed/antidepressant variety.
Just sayn’. Generally nice folks, though – if you didn’t look too closely into the family dynamic.
Perhaps that’s true of all families, come to think of it.
Turgidson
@Origuy:
Obama: “Yeah, that’s what bin Laden thought, too.”
talking point dead.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris: IMHO the “happy bipartisan era” collapsed when the question of civil rights for African Americans would no longer be deferred. As long as politics was principally about white men’s needs, a somewhat rickety consensus could hold together. Once the scope of politics expanded beyond that, it broke, and we’ve been living with the aftermath ever since.
Rorgg
I live in a pretty red area, exurban Chicago — Joe Walsh is my congresscritter, for Chrissakes — and I’ve seen ONE Rmoney sticker.
Also, it’s good to see Walsh going down so hard he’s gonna make a dent in the ground.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@schrodinger’s cat:
No doubt.
I was in the Kennebunk, Maine area 3 weeks ago, and had expected to see tons of Romney bumper stickers. I counted… 2. Compared to 7 or 8 Obama stickers. Surprising, that.
The demographic I really don’t understand is the Obama/Scott Brown voter. Numerically, that has to be about over 20% of Brown’s voters. Who are those people? And why?
FlipYrWhig
We’re starting to see Romney swag here in Southeast Virginia. Usually it works as a reliable index of who’s going to try to cut you off at the next traffic merge.
FlipYrWhig
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Hasn’t Scott Brown succeeded in branding himself as Working Class Hero? That would explain a lot of it.
Elie
@Montysano:
Yeah — but probably more of a nightmare for Romney’s staff — he seems totally clueless..
As for Obama, this has to be handled “delicately”. If he is the least bit cocky or worse yet, “intellectual” or “condescending”, it will be interpeted that he is arrogant. He can’t be seen as “laughing” at Romney, though it may be tempting at times. They are both tall and good looking, so there won’t be an obvious asymmetry in that way, but Romney has a kind of mechanical way of moving that makes him look – well – mechanical.
What Obama is doing most effectively now, is wearing down Romney’s confidence. This loss is screaming out from the candidate and his organization and getting worse every day. If this is successful, he will be able to let this progression become evident to the national audience without saying too much…
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep, the “This Old House” voter: I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that every other ‘worktruck’ has a “SCOTT BROWN: He’s for US” sticker on it.
The main cause of my (admittedly, borderline irrational) revulsion is just how fake the man is: Even that working class accent he puts on is an affectation.
(Sorry, Scotty-boyo… you don’t get that pseudo-Southie accent growing up in Wakefield and Newburyport).
japa21
@Rorgg: You should check out the Daily Herald website and the LTE’s. Whenever Walsh comes up, the anti-Walsh comments outnumber the pro-Walsh something like 10-1. He is my Congresscritter as well, and every day he does something that makes him look worse. And I didn’t think that was possible.
schrodinger's cat
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Did you say hi to Bush?
mclaren
This illustrates the paradox about Obama. He’s a dynamite campaigner and absolutely ruthless when it comes to winning elections. Obama will bring it to the Republicans in this campaign the way Truman did in 1948. He’ll rip their guts out with hardcore truth and he’ll be relentless, like the terminator.
But then when it comes to governing…Obama mysteriously turns all mushy and wishy-washy. He shuts off the populist rhetoric and starts “compromising” with the goddamn psychotic far-right until he’s “compromised” so much that he’s signing off on the Bush-era tax cuts.
If Obama would govern the way he campaigns, I’d be his biggest supporter. As it is, though, I’m not gonna complain about Obama strangling Romney with his own intestines, electorally speaking. With any luck Romney will get such an education that he’ll never dare run for public office again.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Yes, it’s almost as though there are conservative Democrats in Congress that Obama has to deal with when he wants to get legislation passed or something.
ETA: It’s almost as though the Republicans have controlled the House for the past two years, but that’s not possible, is it?
mclaren
@BGinCHI:
The only problem is that Pol Pot is dead.
Stuart_b
I had thought Mitt (or Gingrich) was the best chance they had of winning or at least not losing big–but at the expense of a lot of support coming from Obama-hating independents and conservative Democrats. Thus also the best chance Democrats had of keeping the Senate and even taking back the House. With his poor campaign I wonder where that’s going.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
As usual, the clueless obot chirps gibberish. Ronald Reagan dealt with a congress dominated by Democrats, yet he managed to force his agenda through. He did it with a combination of guile and pushing the boundaries of the law with things like signing statements and sequestering funds. Reagan obeyed the letter of the law, but as president you can do one hell of a lot if you obey the letter of the law and traduce its spirit.
It got to the point during the Reagan administration that liberals had to sue the EPA just to get them to enforce the goddamn Clean Water Act.
Well, Obama could do exactly the same thing. Let’s take 4 examples, which clueless Mnemosyne is too ignorant and too incompetent to be aware of:
[1] Obama has allowed the Republican-dominated congress to block almost all of his appointments. There’s a solution to this — recess appointments. Obama simply refuses to use that option. Obama does the recess appointments, problem solved. We have a critical shortage of governors on the federal reserve board…Obama could solve that in one stroke with recess appointments. The newly created consumer financial protector board has no director: Obama could solve that with a recess appointment. He just doesn’t want to. It wouldn’t be “bipartisan.”
[2] Obama could unleash the DOJ on Wall Street and drag in the head of every major brokerage house and bank and investment bank in orange jumpsuits and force ’em through a perp walk. Obama just doesn’t want to. And don’t tell me “Republicans control the Department of Justice.” Bullshit! It’s Obama’s DOJ! He runs it! Not the Republicans!
[3] Obama could start enforcing antitrust laws and bringing massive antitrust cases against corrupt abusive monopolies like the American Medical Association, which artificially restricts the number of students it accepts into medical schools every year to insure that American doctors enjoy salaries on average double those of doctors in Germany or Spain or France or the Netherlands. Obama could turn loose the antitrust juggernaut against all those goddamn monopoly and duopolgy ISPs that gouge customers for overpriced shitty internet service that’s slower than the internet speeds in Bulgaria, fer cripe’s sake. Obama could unleash the antitrust hounds of hell against Big Pharma for their corrupt practices of paying bribes to doctors to recommend their overpriced drugs. But Obama chooses not to.
[4] When it comes to issues like closing Gitmo, Obama could sequester funds from another area of the military (for example, shave off some money from this week’s fuel allotment in Afghanistan), transfer the money to the Gitmo base and use it ferry the prisoners out of Cuba in military transports and shut down the entire illegal prison and put the prisoners on trial in regular courts. Sure, the Republicans would file a lawsuit…and by the time the lawsuit came to trial, the deed would be done and it would all be moot. That’s how the Republicans did it under Reagan and Bush. That’s the way to play hardball. Obama could do it too — he just doesn’t want to.
JWL
The only thing that could have improved that ‘Son of Boss’ ad is if the scandal was instead known as the ‘Son of Sam’ tax dodge.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
That’s what I’m noticing, too (well, part of it). By my very unscientific survey there are a lot more Obama bumper stickers than Romney right now (and this is commuting in traffic-heavy Atlanta every day, most of it in a bright-red district) but the Rmoney stickers, and/or Nobama stickers, are ALL on the big-ass expensive SUVs and trucks, never on the vehicles driven by the 99%.
I would expect the bumper-sticker ratio to tighten somewhat after the RNC or VP announcement, but it really is quite remarkable the sheer number of Obama stickers I see daily and the dearth of stickers for the presumptive GOP nominee.
Honesty compels me to admit, however, that there are a shitload of Paultards around here, so I do see plenty of Ron Paul stickers too. Gives me hope for fun and shenanigans at the convention.
Catsy
@mclaren:
You really believe this?
I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you were a lawyer of some kind and knew better.
Princess Leia
Hey, what’s this that Huntsman Senior is calling for Mitt’s returns?
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
Sure, let’s go step-by-step. It’s so easy to point out your fail at times like these:
Sure … for 18 months, which is when recess appointments expire. And the person who was recess appointed can’t be nominated or re-appointed to the position. But if you want a short-term solution with a temporary head who everyone in the department knows will be required by law to leave after 18 months, let’s do it. I’m sure that all of the Bush appointees who were given permanent civil servant positions from which they cannot be fired will totally cooperate with their temporary department heads.
And then the case is laughed out of court and the judge forbids the DoJ from bringing a new case or — better yet — the perps are acquitted by the jury, and nothing is actually accomplished. But we would get photos of Jamie Dimon in handcuffs that would make people feel good even if he was acquitted, so … winning!
Um, medical students are not accepted into medical schools by the AMA. The schools are accredited by the AMA.
You may need to do a review of anti-trust law if you think an accrediting body is the same thing as a monopoly.
Ah, a return back to the old Ronald Reagan days of ignoring US law and doing whatever the president feels like doing. That couldn’t possibly go wrong.
Though I do love how you rant about Obama’s lawbreaking ways when it comes to al-Awlaki and lecture us all about how no one is above the law, but desperately want him to break the law in the US to do what you want to do. So very libertarian of you.
Spectre
“They also defeated Hitler”
This is false. The U.S. planners under Roosevelt were perfectly content with letting Hitler expand through most of Europe, and were calculating on a post WWII world where the U.S. would coexist with Hitler.
It’s only after the Soviet Union inflicted death wounds on Hitler that the U.S. plans changed.
In fact, if you want to know what your party was doing back then, it was busy praising the Munich agreement.
Chukwu
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/10/13222162-romney-wants-his-business-record-off-limits?lite
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what an assbeating looks like.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
More ignorant crackpot nonsense, as usual. We can debunk these claims quickly and easily.
Thanks for admitting that I’m correct and you’re lying. So that’s 1 down, three to go.
I agree. Let’s do it. Why doesn’t Obama do it? You have no answers, but you’re always ready to explain why anything that would thwart the Republicans is “too difficult” or “only a short-term solution” or “pointless.” The rest of us, by contrast, are interested in actually getting things done instead of wringing our hands and whining about how terribly horrible helpless we Democrats are against the omnipotent world-conquering superhuman Republicans.
Of course they won’t, and the way to deal with lifetime civil service appointees is simply to restructure their departments. The Bush appointee is still undersecretary of (say) the Department of the Interior, but Obama hands down a directive stating that from now on, the undersecretary of the Department of the Interior will be in charge of getting soft drinks for office parties. Everything else goes through other people…people that Obama appointed. Republicans did this all the time, and what’s good for them, should be good enough for us.
Moving on to Mnemosyne’s second ignorant lie:
Nope, not when Obama unleashes RICO. You’ve heard of RICO? Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization act? Passed during the 1980s? Allows the DOJ to seize all assets of the target organization with only the most vague evidence of wrongdoing? Seizure of assets on mere suspicion? It’s called “asset forfeiture.” Seize Jamie Dimon’s assets, tow his cars, auction off his mansion, freeze his bank accounts. He sits in jail with no money, nothing but a low-rent court-appointed lawyer…and then the assistant U.S. attorney for that district of New York walks into Dimon’s jail cell and says, “Let’s talk. We’ll unfreeze 10% of your assets if you plead guilty and take 5 years in minimum security prison. Otherwise, your assets are gone. Forever. This offer is on the table for the next sixty seconds. Think fast.” The DOJ does this to accused drug dealers all the time. What good enough for drug dealers should be plenty good enough for financial crime lords. Seize all their assets both here and worldwide, and they’re done. They’ll fold like cheap suits.
As for the claim that Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the financial crime lords “never did anything illegal,” bullshit — they engaged in wire fraud, criminal fraud, self-dealing, grand larceny, violation of innumerable SEC disclosure rules, and many other civil as well as criminal violations. Simultaneously sue the bastards for every dime they’ve got and forfeit their assets pending outcome of the criminal fraud trials. Let’s be clear what these financial crime lords actually did: they sold other people securities whose value they misrepresented (that’s criminal fraud) while taking on as counterparties transactions in which they shorted the value of those securities and hugely profited (that’s self-dealing as well as a violation of lots of SEC disclosure regs). In addition, these brokerage houses and investment banks and regular banks engaged in systematic massive fraud by using “robosigning” to get temps to falsely sign off on MERS mortgages that weren’t owned by the people the documents claimed they were. So we’ve got not only criminal fraud, not only self-dealing, but massive amounts of accessory to commit fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud…hundreds and hundreds of criminal charges involving forgery, misrepresentation, wire fraud, you name it.
The usual “learned helplessness” from a clueless whimpering obot. That’s your siren song, isn’t it, Mnemosyne? “Nothing can be done. It’s all hopeless.” Bullshit! The judge can’t forbid the DOJ from bringing civil suit. And the judge can’t forbid the asset forfeiture because you’re not arresting Jamie Dimon, you’re arrest Jamie Dimon’s money (a neat distinction, courtesy of RICO and the asset forfeiture laws). What’s more, RICO has a much lower burden of proof: hearsay is admissable, because this is a conspircy case. The latitude for prosecutors in a RICO case is immense. You don’t think some minor guy at Goldman Sachs will roll on Jamie Dimon in return for a walk? You don’t think Lloyd Blankfein’s secretary will dish the dirt on him in exchange for immunity? Think again, that’s the way big drugs cases roll all the time.
Better than that, kiddo — like Charlie Sheen on his “Savage Torpedo of Truth” tour, the U.S. Attorney for the district of New York would be able to shout “I ALREADY GOT YOUR MONEY!” Let’s see if Jamie Dimon can mount a defense with no assets, no millions, nothing but an orange jumpsuit. The DOJ does this for accused drug dealers every day, let’s do it for accused financial fraudsters. And before you scream “But that’s illegal!” learn the law: asset forfeiture is a routine tool used by prosecutors nowadays. I’m just proposing we unleash it against financial crime lords as well as drug lords.
Now that we’ve debunked Mnemosyne’s second ignorant incompetent, let’s move on to demolish her third lie:
Um, you may to review your garbled logic and scrambled reasoning as well as your complete ignorance of the law. Let’s run through it slowwwwwwwwwwwly, so little Mnemosyne grasps the legal reasoning:
Major premise: The AMA restricts accreditation to artificially reduce the number of law schools and thus inflate doctors’ salaries. This is known as “restraint of trade” and its a violation of federal antitrust law because medical schools in many different states get their accreditation restricted. It’s easy to prove this, by the way, since there are today fewer law schools than there were in 1965 even though the U.S. population has substantially increased, and litigation in America has gone through the roof.
Minor premise: By artficially restricting accreditation of new medical schools, the AMA is engaged in an interstate conspiracy in restraint of trade. That’s a clear violation of federal law. Artificially restricting the supply of goods or services in order to bump up prices is a clear case of restraint of trade when the service or goods provider has a monopoly — which the AMA does.
Conclusion: simple syllogism — the AMA is therefore guilty of conspiracy to restrain trade. The DOJ could use the RICO act against the AMA too. Seize all their assets. Asset forfeiture would definitely get their attention. They want their money back? Fine, let’s talk. We start with expanding the number of doctors (because America suffers from a chronic shortage of physicians, as Ezra Klein and many others have pointed out, particularly in rural areas) due to the AMA’s criminal conspiracy to artificially reduce the number of doctors who graduate every year from medical school. Then we move on to eliminating the corrupt practices like the AMA refusing to discipline doctors for taking bribes from big pharma to recommend overpriced drugs, etc.
Now to debunk Mnemosyne’s last lie:
Since Obama is already ignoring the law when he orders U.S. citizens murdered and kidnapped without even charging ’em with a crime, how can you possibly object, Mnemosyne, to the much lesser violation of technically following congress’ funding resolution to continue to pay for Gitmo but as an empty prison? I mean, after all, Obama would be continuing to keep the prison open…just…without any prisoners. He’s technically following the strict letter of the law. He’s just bending it a bit.
You apparently don’t see any contradiction between swoon with rhapsodic delight when Obama orders illegal unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping and the kidnapping and murder of U.S. citizens…but when I suggest that Obama transfer some funds internally and ship the Gitmo prisoners stateside and try ’em in a court of law with real lawyers and real evidence and the real rule of law in a real courtroom, why, that makes your froth at the mouth.
Little bit of a contradiction there, isn’t it, Mnemosyne? It’s fine for Obama to violate the constitution by ordering America’s kidnapped or spied on or murdered without charging ’em with a crime, but it’s horrible horrible horrible for Obama to obey the strict letter of the funding resolution (continue to fund Gitmo) while bypassing its spirit (Gitmo becomes an empty facility and if congress wants to continue funding an empty prison, why be my guest! Keep paying to keep those lights on in empty cells! Keep paying those guards to patrol empty corridors!).
Stick a fork in yourself, Mnemosyne. You’re done.
Captain C
@Catsy: Christians who are rooting for the official Bad Guys. Not unlike Star Wars fans who root for Palpatine and friends.
Captain C
@LanceThruster: They might lose their Temple Recommend. Serious business, if you’re a part of the faithful.
McJulie
@Mnemosyne: Obama as the Democratic Reagan has always been my dream. I think he has the same fundamental likability, and the same way of seeming like he’s giving it to you straight.
He’s also good at stating moderately liberal positions in ways that sound like common sense, not policy wonkism. And that was one of the big ways Reagan hurt this country — by embedding a lot of Republican ideology into “common sense.”
mclaren
@kay:
That’s a fascinating insight. If correct, it would go a long ways toward explaining why Romney’s campaign is such a complete clusterfuck. The guy really believes that he’s an Omnipotent Master of the Universe. He really thinks only he matters. All those campaign workers in the battleground states, they’re just little people. Disposable minions. Unimportant. Don’t need ’em. It’s the Mittster who matters and no one and nothing else.
Incidentally, the classic narcissistic personality disorder typical of a high-functioning sociopath.
LanceThruster
@Captain C:
Thank you. My childhood neighbors were pretty devout LDS (and wonderfully sweet)and this site (ex-LDS) reminds me of some of the attitudes I encountered, either from them or their pals I met. see – http://mormoncurtain.com/start_here.html
At some event where we were invited (missionary send-off for their kid?), I still remember being creeped out by very young children standing up and testifying before the assembled that they “know that this is the one true church and Joseph Smith is the true prophet of God.”
As one of the ranks of the godless (ex-Cath), I have a soft spot in my heart for anyone’s apostates. Just saw the author for “Book of Mormon Girl” on the Daily Show, and though I liked her an awful lot, I was left with the feeling that adopting a “reformed” Mormon or Mormon-lite position lends too much credibility to the less tolerant structure the beliefs are passed down from. She actually argued if I understood correctly, that her more liberal positions could be justified by doctrine – which goes against the proclamation that once the prophet decides, the matter is settled.
I have problems with human authoritarianism as it is…let alone those feeling that they are God’s proxies.
[sigh]
LanceThruster
Wow – This dealt with back tithing. I had forgotten that Orin Hatch passed a bill allowing tithes to be paid though other bankruptcy creditors had to wait in line.
http://mormoncurtain.com/topic_tithing_section1.html
Todd Dugdale
The CNN poll shows that 63% of registered voters think Obama will win. Only 33% think that Romney will win.
Considering that 45% of the sample said that they are voting for Romney, that means that about 25% of them think that they are voting for the losing guy.
At this point in 2008, 44% thought that McCain would win.
KS in MA
@BGinCHI: Ever notice how Mitt’s sons and Sarah Palin’s kids all have the same names?