Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

In my day, never was longer.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

After roe, women are no longer free.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

You are here: Home / Politics / Religion / Religious Nuts / “Values” Voters

“Values” Voters

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From the NYTimes:

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas invoked the redemptive story of his parents, both plagued by too much drinking, to show the role that faith has played in his life. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who took the stage as a video of a fetal ultrasound played for the crowd, said that liberty, virtue and God were intertwined, and he quoted Corinthians to make his point.

The two senators, who are both considering a run for the White House in 2016, spoke on Friday to the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of social conservatives that has been an important ticket punch for Republican presidential candidates…

Or, as the SPLC calls it, “An annual political conference bringing together some of the most extreme groups on the religious right… hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC), listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because it spreads demonizing falsehoods about the LGBT community.” Co-sponsored this year by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Council and Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association

NYTimes, again:

Mr. Paul, who is fond of saying that libertarian should not be confused with libertine, told the crowd, “What America really needs is a revival.”…

Mr. Paul emphasized his opposition to abortion. As he was introduced to the crowd, a video of an ultrasound and the murmur of a beating heart played, accompanied by lines from Mr. Paul’s speeches like, “I will always take a stand for life.”

He ended his speech with a line from 2 Corinthians: “Where there is the spirit of the Lord, there is liberty.”…

TPM, on the other hand, picked up the message from the guy I expect to be the GOP’s actual candidate in 2016:

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) delivered a comparatively somber speech at the Values Voter Summit on Friday where he critiqued his own party and called for conservatives to be more active.

“Quit being scared and start being an activist,” Santorum said in his speech…

“If you look at the current conservative movement, the Republican Party, there are issues that we haven’t even lost yet and we’re talking about giving up on,” Santorum said. “We’re not even willing to fight the fight to stand for what we say we believe in.”…

At one point during the speech Santorum said that it was important for Republicans to pick up as many seats in the 2014 cycle because in the 2016 cycle more Republican senators would be up for re-election and, according to Santorum, the chance of the GOP picking up Senate seats “are pretty much zero.”

Charles Johnson has done a great job reporting on VVS14 both at LGF and on his twitter feed. Samples from him, and others, below:


Reader Interactions

128Comments

  2. 2.

    Tara the Antisocial Social Worker

    You really think Senator Man-on-Dog has a shot at the nomination? They tend to go for the faux “moderate” that the media will kiss up to, like McCain or Romney. Santorum’s extremism turned him into a Google punchline.

    Then again, with the obvious pick (Christie) wounded by scandal, it does kind of leave the field wide open. I’m hoping Trey Gowdy runs, if only to show his disturbing resemblance to Draco Malfoy.

  3. 3.

    Mustang Bobby

    I’ve been watching the Values Voters Summit conference for several years, and this is the most insane one I’ve seen – by far.

    It’s a good thing he’s added the qualifier because there is no limit to nutsery.

  4. 4.

    danielx

    I’ve been watching the Values Voters Summit conference for several years, and this is the most insane one I’ve seen – by far.

    Hey, they’ve had six years to simmer with the Kenyan Imposter in their White House. On the other hand, “most insane” is one of those deals like trying to measure how high is up.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Between Newsmax and posts like this one, I think I hear more GOTV messages from the right than I do from the left.

  6. 6.

    waspuppet

    Christie? Wounded by scandal? Please. No Republican since Nixon has ever been wounded by scandal. If he is wounded, Our Media Stars will be sure to un-wound him quick.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    @Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: There aren’t many fake-moderates available this time round. Christie is, as you say, somewhat scandal-clad. Jeb Bush has committed thoughtcrime against the base’s Known Truths with his views on education, Mitt Romney is, well, Mitt Romney. Maybe Scott Walker if he survives his reelection. Hardly a moderate in any sense of the word, but he seems to have convinced at least some media idiots that he has leanings in those directions.

  11. 11.

    Corner Stone

    @Tara the Antisocial Social Worker:

    Then again, with the obvious pick (Christie) wounded by scandal, it does kind of leave the field wide open.

    Christie was never going anywhere in national politics. But I am glad for the bridge shennanies as it has at least kept the political media from fawning all over him for the last several months.

  12. 12.

    Comrade Dread

    Values…

    If you were pro-life, you’d be in favor of comprehensive sex education, free contraceptives, HPV vaccines, free prenatal care, OB-GYN visits, delivery and NICU care, paid maternity leave, and public day care and preschool, so poor women who need to work have a safe place for their children during the day. (You’d also be anti-war and anti-death penalty.)

    If you were pro-family, you wouldn’t be nativist yahoos (or tolerating them) demanding that the US government break up families that have been here for years. And you wouldn’t be working so hard to stop new families from forming.

    If you were pro-freedom, you wouldn’t be working so hard to ensure that people are free from the government, but slaves to corporations and employers.

    If you were pro-child, you wouldn’t be supporting policies and businesses that ensure our children’s world will be worse than the one we inherited from our parents.

    If you were pro-economy, you might start thinking about how small towns like Miami won’t be here in 50 years and how much that will cost.

    If you were pro-life, you wouldn’t fight so hard to make sure that millions of Americans are left without health care.

    If you were pro-child, you wouldn’t fight so hard for policies that cause many of them go to bed hungry or grow up in homes where both parents work 2 or more jobs and have no time to spend with them.

    If you were pro-life, you might start to think about how supporting obscenely easy access to guns might be a little counter-productive.

    I could go on, but I think it’s fairly clear to most people outside of the bubble you’ve formed that your Values stop and end with how someone uses their genitalia.

    Frankly, that makes me sad.

  14. 14.

    Schlemazel

    So is that Sister Sarah standing at 1400 Pennsylvania Ave?

    Its actually beneficial to do a little word swap if you want to understand current pressure groups. Replace “Family” with “Fascist” and “Value” with “Vicious”.
    “The Fascist Vicious Forum” more accurately reflects their beliefs.

    EDIT: @Comrade Dread:
    Very nicely done. That should be a commercial.

  15. 15.

    D58826

    OT but Orange man has spoken on ISIS –

    At the end of the day, I think it’s going to take more than airstrikes to drive them out of there,” Boehner said Sunday. “At some point, somebody’s boots have to be on the ground.”

    Asked if those boots had to be American, Boehner said, “We have no choice.”

    “These are barbarians,” Boehner said. “They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.”

    Maybe some of those super patriots at the Values Summit would like to answer Boehner’s call and put on those boots and head over to Iraq.

  16. 16.

    Corner Stone

    @dmsilev:

    Jeb Bush has committed thoughtcrime against the base’s Known Truths with his views on education, Mitt Romney is, well, Mitt Romney.

    Of the current potentials, my money is on Jeb or Mitt. As noted, the more cult like the following for a candidate at an event like this, the more repulsed the average nutjob Republican gets towards that candidate.

  17. 17.

    Suffern ACE

    @Baud: “see. The values voters don’t like him in their straw poll. He’s the real deal (despite telling the world 1,000 times to Sunday that he is indeed much more of a dominionist on social issues than even the newly moderate Glenn Beck”

  21. 21.

    c u n d gulag

    Ah, yes, the vaunted “Values Voters!”

    The ‘voters’ who ‘value’ racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, and/or religious intolerance.

    Just one errant drone – PRETTY PLEASE, FSM!!!

  22. 22.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Former MD governor Erlich may be thinking about running. Washington Post:

    Ehrlich said he has spent much of this year promoting his 2013 political manifesto, “America: Hope for Change.” Former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu, a GOP powerbroker in the Granite State, wrote a glowing review for the book’s jacket; former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) penned its forward.

    Georgevits said he appreciated Ehrlich’s visit, but was unfamiliar with his politics and unsure of whether the former governor could be a viable presidential contender.

    “Everybody with national ambition comes to New Hampshire,” Georgevits said. “A friend of mine said he was coming to town and asked whether we wanted to see him. We said, ‘sure,’ and that’s about it.”

    FWIW.

    It’s hard to separate the grifters from the serious challengers at this point, but I think we’ll see at least one “fresh” face make a go for the GOP nomination.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    D58826

    @Comrade Dread: Years ago Barney Frank said for the pro-life crowd life begins at conception and ends at birth. I think he was wrong. Given the opposition to prenatal care life begins at conception and ends when the pregnancy test comes back positive. They only care for their little tribe but want to inflict those views on everyone else

  26. 26.

    Comrade Dread

    @D58826: We have always been at war with Eastasia.

    Why do I suspect that if ISIS were made up of people who identified as Christians, demanded adherence to the Mosiac Law Light Ed., and they stoned all the right people instead of beheading them, Republicans would probably demand we supply them weapons to help in their fight.

  27. 27.

    Suffern ACE

    @D58826: so which “hopeful” will be the first to lure out the bulk of these values voters by declaring out loud that Islam isn’t a religion with any constitutional protection?

  32. 32.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @D58826: Y’know, even though it sounds paranoid, I’d glad these bozos are so incompetent, because otherwise I could very easily see them try to manufacture an “incident” here in the United States as a pretext to getting “those American boots on the ground” Waist Deep In The Big Muddy (the sequel) again.

  33. 33.

    greennotGreen

    I left the Judeo-Christian tradition decades ago, but did all these “Values” voters read the same Bible I did? I see almost nothing of what Jesus taught in their beliefs and practices.

  34. 34.

    Corner Stone

    @kbuttle:

    Walker’s the nominee even if he loses in half-liberal Wisconsin.

    An inert and moldy dishrag has more charisma and presence than Walker.

  36. 36.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This is real, as real as anything from Fox

    Fox News @ FoxNews · 20m
    Cruz wins Values Voter straw poll again, Biden finishes ahead of Christie

    The speakers at the Values Voter Summit are telling us exactly what they plan to do. We ignore them or brush them off at our peril.

    Who’s “we”? People reading Charles Johnson’s tweets and this blog know this and get this. A whole bunch of people are voting for certified VVS candidates Cory Gardener and Jodi Earnst because they’re now saying, “Oh, no, all that stuff I’ve been saying my whole career? I don’t mean it anymore”. So fucking frustrating.

  37. 37.

    Schlemazel

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    I have wondered if this time the GOP might try a little slight of hand & give us a candidate with no strong history on anything. The goobers will all wink & nod knowing he is one of them & the low-info types will not see a problem because he is a blank slate. It has worked for them with USSC nominees. It could work if they could pick out some governor or ex- that could be made to look like he had a successful run at the state level. The big problem would be getting him to keep his mouth shut on a host of issues that are losers for them. But it could work and given the clown car that is the known contenders might appear appealing.

  39. 39.

    Suffern ACE

    @Corner Stone: yep. His lack of charisma actually would help him if he wanted to run as a “moderate”. Although it is a huge deficit. Pawlenty should give him pointers on hearing up a room.

  40. 40.

    max

    Mr. Paul, who is fond of saying that libertarian should not be confused with libertine, told the crowd, “What America really needs is a revival.”… He ended his speech with a line from 2 Corinthians: “Where there is the spirit of the Lord, there is liberty.”…

    Therefore we must ban freedom for everyone who isn’t a Baptist – who must have the freedom to burn as many crosses as they want.

    Charles Johnson: I’ve been watching the Values Voters Summit conference for several years, and this is the most insane one I’ve seen – by far.

    They are on the cusp of a great victory (not really) that will sweep the communists from office once and forever and then they can elect the craziest person possible President and make the Great Leap Backwards to 1928. Comrades! To the privatized barricades! (Of course, True Christian Conservatives know the work won’t be finished until they get the United States back to 1858 – before everything started to go wrong for them.)

    @Corner Stone: Of the current potentials, my money is on Jeb or Mitt. As noted, the more cult like the following for a candidate at an event like this, the more repulsed the average nutjob Republican gets towards that candidate.

    Jeb doesn’t appear to want to run, so that leaves Mitt. But whatever – the rich guys will get behind their candidate in the end, the man who will make a bipartisan compromise between hard right-wing and ultra right-wing.

    max
    [‘The compromise position will be MORE MONEY FOR RICH PEOPLE.’]

  41. 41.

    Arclite

    @Corner Stone:

    Of the current potentials, my money is on Jeb or Mitt. As noted, the more cult like the following for a candidate at an event like this, the more repulsed the average nutjob Republican gets towards that candidate.

    In both 2008 and 2012, Repubs went with the most moderate candidate in the field: McCain and Romney. It frightens me that Santorum or Cruz could even get on the ballot.

  42. 42.

    Schlemazel

    @greennotGreen:
    Assuming you read the bible then, no, no they did not read the same bible because they have never read the bible. They have had bits and pieces read to them and put into a context that fits the readers POV and not reflect the times or context of the original.

    I discovere this as a teen who read the bible (twice!) and got into long arguments with morans who wanted to argue the bible by quoting crap out of context & with no understanding. I finally gave up as they are so sure of their beliefs that God Himself could not change them.

  45. 45.

    Corner Stone

    @D58826:

    “These are barbarians,” Boehner said. “They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.”

    It’s like none of these people remember the invasion of Iraq in 2003. We haven’t even fucking left there yet, assholes!
    Stop it with the cartoonish fear mongering and over the top threat assessment bullshit. It’s bad enough to see the idiot R’s doing this but it makes me pucker when I see D’s falling over each other to climb to the top of Scary Mountain.

  46. 46.

    Arclite

    Charles Johnson has done a great job reporting on VVS14 both at LGF and on his twitter feed. Samples from him, and others, below:

    I don’t get it. Why would an LGF writer attack the right?

  47. 47.

    Mike in NC

    The shitheads who show up for the Values Voters clown parade are generally too extreme for CPAC. Think about that for a minute.

  51. 51.

    M31

    “there are issues that we haven’t even lost yet and we’re talking about giving up on,” Santorum said.”

    My favorite word in that sentence is “yet”.

    I love how even Santorum knows they are on the losing side of issues. Being on the losing side is, of course, better if you’re a grifter who uses rage as the in to people’s pockets.

    Oh, and of course Draco Malfoy has a chance to be President. Bullying, cowardly child of an aristocratic family with a dark past of sucking up to evil power? America elected him already, twice.

  53. 53.

    Schlemazel

    @Suffern ACE:
    But if they are not on the record with some of the worst of the public actions, votes or pronouncements they could pass as moderate. The Dems could run ads pointing out X has signed the bathtub drowning pledge or the forced birth pledge and X would just mumble some platitudes to calm the morons.

    X would start with 27% of the vote no matter what. For the sake of argument lets say the Dem candidate starts there too. so they really are only fighting over 46%, most of whom never really pay attention anyway. They only need to get 50.1% of that 46% & a lot of those love the bathtub drowning idea. They may hate the forced birth thing but it is not life and death for them so they are just looking for the least argument. You can be for forced birth as long as you don’t appear nuts about it. You can see this sort of thing working in the GOPs bullshit attempts to calm womens fears about them.

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council Action which sponsored the annual conference, said that values voters are looking for leaders who “say what they mean and mean what they say.”

    “They are looking for leaders who will take clear, unequivocal stands on the challenges facing our nation, not nuanced politically correct speeches. This is evidenced by those who finished top of this year’s straw poll,” he said in a statement.

    Fucking nuance, how does it work?

  55. 55.

    PurpleGirl

    @Arclite: A few years ago Johnson had “light blub” moment and saw how crazy the GOP was. While I don’t think he’s made the same change our bloghost as, Johnson has seen fit to poke at the craziness and point it out.

  57. 57.

    kbuttle

    @Corner Stone:

    No argument. But Nixon? Bush the 1st? Won’t he just come across as serious and down to business? Characteristics with which he already beat unions, liberals, and other scary groups who hate America?

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    @M31:

    Oh, and of course Draco Malfoy has a chance to be President. Bullying, cowardly child of an aristocratic family with a dark past of sucking up to evil power? America elected him already, twice.

    There is evidence of DM actually applying himself over the course of the story. Of course, it’s to strengthen his skill at being evil, but it’s still more effort than has ever been proven to be displayed by GWB.

  60. 60.

    Chris

    @dmsilev:

    Christie is, as you say, somewhat scandal-clad.

    I am still somewhat impressed that the scandal tainted him as much as it has. It’s exactly the kind of petty, sticking-it-to-liberals-because-they’re-liberal move that the right wing base loves, and I guess I just expected the professional centrists in the MSM to work harder to push the “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” line they usually do when a Republican’s caught fucking things up.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    @kbuttle:

    No argument. But Nixon? Bush the 1st?

    I wouldn’t exactly call it charisma, but Nixon did have a kind of force or presence about everything he did. Bush 1st could never have been elected president without the orgiastic Reagan drippings he was covered in.
    And holy crap, I just wiki’d the 1980 R primary to doublecheck numbers and it is amazing how much GHWB looks just like GWB in that picture.
    And yes, father/son and all, but that is squicking me out.

  62. 62.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodinger’s cat: to quote the late, great Colonel Sherman T Potter, I don’t pretend to know beans about fashion, but whenever I see a picture of her I think she’s just trying too hard to make a point. Like back in the nineties when Laura Ingram and some Bush flack would spike their hair and wear neon colored miniskirts to refutiate the idea the Republicans were the retrograde party, and Villagers would dutifully caption pics with “Not your father’s GOP!”

  63. 63.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    nator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who took the stage as a video of a fetal ultrasound played for the crowd, said that liberty, virtue and God were intertwined, and he quoted Corinthians to make his point.

    Nothing says Libertarian than Paul of Tarsus. But I supposed it will be IKOYR with the Libertarians.

  64. 64.

    Ronnie Pudding

    I think Chris Christie has more of a chance to get the nom than Santorum. Odds are, Santorum will win more states, but he’ll never win the nomination. If all the other non-extremists falter, they’ll give it to Christie. None of these Values Voters guys has any chance.

  65. 65.

    Chris

    @Comrade Dread:

    Why do I suspect that if ISIS were made up of people who identified as Christians, demanded adherence to the Mosiac Law Light Ed., and they stoned all the right people instead of beheading them, Republicans would probably demand we supply them weapons to help in their fight.

    You don’t need to suspect. The Uganda “kill the gays bill” (since downgraded to “sentence the gays to life imprisonment,” because Am I Not Merciful?) had plenty of support, both rhetorical and actual, from the same American fundiegelical dickwads who point to the same laws in Saudi Arabia when saying “why won’t gays vote for us?” Pat Robertson’s financial ties to bloody dictators like Rios Montt, Mobutu and Charles Taylor, also too.

    The American religious right really is the Christian version of the Persian Gulf zillionaires that the Bin Ladens and Al Baghdadis of the world go to for their start-up loans.

  66. 66.

    Kropadope

    @Mike in NC:

    The shitheads who show up for the Values Voters clown parade are generally too extreme for CPAC. Think about that for a minute.

    Are very own little ISIS and Al-Qaeda. How cute. I wonder how long until the values voter summit starts overthrowing cities to form their own nation in Nebraska.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    @Arclite:

    I don’t think you’ve read LGF in a while — believe it or not, Charles Johnson had a John Cole moment and swung back to the left. Pam Geller hates Johnson’s guts now.

  70. 70.

    Davis X. Machina

    @kbuttle: Walker’s the nominee even if he loses in half-liberal Wisconsin.

    Short of Walker’s actual Federal indictment, I agree with you.

    Crab-bucket politics is the race-neutral way to run a racist campaign.

    I mean, we all know who those pension-chasing, unaccountable civil service drones are, don’t we? Half of them are affirmative action hires anyways.

    The fightin’ general America needs to bring the war to its real enemy — not ISIS, AFSCME.

  71. 71.

    Arclite

    @Mnemosyne: It has been a good five years since I waded in over there. I hadn’t realized it. Glad smart people can get a clue and roll with reality.

  72. 72.

    Roger Moore

    @Schlemazel:

    I discovere this as a teen who read the bible (twice!) and got into long arguments with morans who wanted to argue the bible by quoting crap out of context & with no understanding.

    If you’ve read the Bible, you should know that quoting it out of context is an ancient Christian tradition that goes back to the Evangelists. It’s amazing how often the quote Psalms and Isaiah out of context to try to prove how Jesus fulfilled this or that prophecy.

  73. 73.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ronnie Pudding: Romney needed All The Money and the extreme peculiarity of Rick Santorum to beat Rick Santorum. Chris Christie will have All The Money, if he can keep his inner Cartman under control, he’s much better with people than Willard (his donut moment on Letterman was as good a political comedy bit as I’ve seen), and I suspect as a rightwing Catholic he can talk to the fundie/Ratzinger sweet spot better than Willard or Li’l Ricky. More than any other pol, I think the old cliche about being his own worst enemy is true of Christie.

    I wish he were ruined by the Bridge thing, or even more the pension should-be scandals and credit downgrades (or the distribution of 9/11 relics to cronies, which I thought would get the Village riled up, but IOKIYAR), but a part of me really wants to see Christie, Rand Paul and Cruz go at each other. I thought McCain and Giuliani would turn on each other in ’08, but I think this could be the Godzilla vs Mothra vs King Kong of right wing egos.

  75. 75.

    Belafon

    @Arclite: Not to sound too rude, but you haven’t been paying attention. Charles Johnson, like our blog host here, went through a WTF transition. While Cole’s change centered around the right’s handling of Terri Schiavo, Johnson’s change was with respect to how the right treated Muslims.

    And part of the reason these two fight each other is that they are both very passionate. You kind of have to be to be willing to run a blog on politics.

  76. 76.

    Matt McIrvin

    @PurpleGirl: Johnson’s had a long journey. Pre-9/11, he was a technology blogger with generally liberal sympathies. Post-9/11, he started chronicling horrible things that radical Islamists said, and the exercise eventually drove him hard to the neocon right. I think what eventually drove him back was realizing, belatedly, that his own comment boards had become a cesspit of bigots and wannabe genocidaires as toxic as anything he’d seen coming out of the Middle East.

  77. 77.

    Chris

    @Mnemosyne:

    It really is one of those “faith in human nature rekindled” moments. Of all the people on the right wing blogosphere that were active when I first discovered it, Charles Johnson was quite possibly the last person I’d ever have expected to see make that kind of heel-face-turn. He was a god to these guys – the person everyone else in those circles would either link to or tell me to go check out when explaining to me why Muslims were the Daleks of real life.

    There really is no such thing as irredeemable, I guess.

  79. 79.

    PIGL

    @Comrade Dread: they would be spotless Christian heroes. The fuck have ISIL done to qualify as evilest evil in the history of ever? Gangs of murdering rapists are two a penny and may be found much closer to home.

  80. 80.

    gelfling545

    @dmsilev:

    Christie is, as you say, somewhat scandal-clad.

    Oh, good grief. I read that as “scantily clad’. The horror was overwhelming.

    ETA: Just to clarify – there is no one in politics I have any wish to see other than fully clothed and some of them not even then.

  81. 81.

    schrodinger's cat

    @Corner Stone: They don’t go with the rest of her outfit, which seems to be somewhat formal if a tad too tight.May be peep toe heels if she thinks sensible pumps are too stuffy. I also don’t like where the shoes hit her foot, they make her legs look stumpy. T-straps or ankle straps have the same effect. In general, strappy sandals work better with a summer dress. Of course YMMV.

  83. 83.

    Botsplainer

    I always laugh and laugh about Alan Sears, a candyass who is a permanent fixture at these things. His ex-wife ditched him for some naughty nooky time with an even bigger smarmy fundamentalist, COL Ronald Ray, USMC (ret.). They go to all of these sorts of event with somber expressions and well-marked Bibles in hand.

    Dude got totally denutted within the movement and still hangs on.

  84. 84.

    shelley

    Ted Cruz, oh yes, please! Can you just imagine that preening egoist in a real debate, where he’s not preaching to the choir?

  85. 85.

    ruemara

    @Mnemosyne: Quite left. He’s doing yeoman’s work on covering this nonsense and he has some serious hate thrown his way due to it.

    Dread, that was an epic statement. I had to share it.

  86. 86.

    Pogonip

    If there was a Balloon Juice Values Voters summit, what would they come up with? (“Resolved: we support nude mopping, as long as no mops are harmed.”)

  88. 88.

    Villago Delenda Est

    ISIL would never consider bombing a “Values Voters” summit. They wouldn’t attack theofascist allies, after all.

  89. 89.

    mb

    I’m praying Ted Cruz will be the GOP nominee too.

    I expect to see a lot of this snarky sentiment on the left, but it’s a dangerous wish. If he is on the ticket as pres or even veep, he has a non-zero chance of becoming pres. That, imo, should be avoided at all cost. Not that wishing and hoping (or praying) have any impact, but I always hope the GOP nominee is, at least, sane. Cruz is too close of a call for comfort.

  91. 91.

    Kathleen

    @PurpleGirl: I read LGF every day and Charles Johnson has changed and has received a lot of flack from nut jobs. His posts and tweets provide an important audit trail of extremist’s trip down the yellow brick road of malice and viciousness (Jim Imhofe, Charles C Johnson, Breitbart.com (who interviewed Chuck Todd). His coverage of Ferguson has been stellar. I only started reading him within the last year so I was only aware that his site was characterized as right wign prior to that.

  93. 93.

    scav

    @schrodinger’s cat: There’s something especially epic meta when she full-on “plays-acts” the what-a-dumb-girl stereotype card to the adoring masses of patriarchal misogynists yearning for the times that never were.

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    RT @ devbost: Get your mind around that. Glenn Beck said he didn’t want gay people to be executed…and people booed. #VVS14
    Beck: “Very few people want the country want to be destroyed.” Audience murmurs. I don’t think they agree with him. #VVS14
    These remind me that last week I heard Glenn Thrush say on MSNBC that the VVS is to the left was Saul Alinsky is to the right, a boogeyman to rile up the base. Because I guess of all the Dem presidential wannabes who flock to the big Alinskyite convention to say scary shit that isn’t leftist enough for the crowd, and that accurately reflects Supreme Court decisions of the last five years.

    Speaking of the Supreme Court: Am I misremembering that in the 90s, right up to 2000, the Supreme Court was an important national issue? now we collectively get all upset about CU or Hobby Lobby for twenty minutes, then go back to worrying about “spending”.

  98. 98.

    srv

    @HR Progressive: It is a tenet of the Wingularity that the closer we get the more reasonable wingnuts will sound.

    Top television and radio host Glenn Beck said in an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News that he regrets some of his time at the cable network, when he hosted his own show, and admitted that he ratcheted rhetoric that helped drive a political wedge in America.

    “I remember [my time on Fox] as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes,” Mr. Beck said on Fox News on Tuesday night. “I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart.”

  99. 99.

    Tommy T

    Wow – Freeperville is ablaze with the news that Ted Cruz won the “Value voters summit” straw poll!
    This is huge and series!!
    .
    Let’s look at their record so far…
    .
    2007: Mitt Romney placed first with almost 28% of a total of 5,776 votes cast.
    2008: No straw poll was held since the Republican nominee for the 2008 presidential election, John McCain, was already decided. Instead, speakers and attendees expressed support for McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin.
    2009: Mike Huckabee won with 28% of the vote.
    2010: Mike Pence won with 24% of the vote.
    2011: Ron Paul won with 37% of the vote.
    Hmmm – that makes them 0 for 5.
    .
    RUN, TED, RUN!!!

  100. 100.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Ted Cruz was the #1 choice?

    I think this is important. Ted Cruz is famous for one thing, and one thing only – knee-jerk opposition to the black man in the white house. There is no other reason to vote for him over anyone else except racism.

    Methinks the ‘value’ these folks hold most dear is one they can’t say aloud.

  101. 101.

    Corner Stone

    I have absolutely zero idea what the F! Rob Lowe was thinking in doing these DirecTV ads with “Super Creepy Rob Lowe”.

  102. 102.

    Chris

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The place where I intern allowed me to see a few sessions of the UN Human Rights Councils from last June and this September. The gay rights related bills create the most interesting bedfellows: pretty much the whole Muslim world joins with quite a few Catholic African and South American countries, and the Vatican, against… basically, the West (and a few others, too).

    Almost as if the “Talibangelical” and “American Taliban” labels were, in fact, entirely well founded, along with speculation about what they’d be doing to gays if they still had the power to.

  103. 103.

    pseudonymous in nc

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think what eventually drove him back was realizing, belatedly, that his own comment boards had become a cesspit of bigots and wannabe genocidaires as toxic as anything he’d seen coming out of the Middle East.

    I believe the specific Schiavo moment for Johnson was when Pammycakes Atlas and Robert Spencer went off to a little gathering of European ‘anti-Islamists’ who turned out to be bona fide white supremacist eliminationist fascists and that those people were now his peers.

    Personally, I think he’s got a long penance to pay off, and he hasn’t quite done it yet.

    @Kathleen: I suspect he has the longest IP block list of any blog.

  104. 104.

    feebog

    @trollhattan:

    Still predicting Walker, presuming he’s not in prison.

    Don’t get the fascination with this guy. If he loses a second term, there is no way he is the Republican nominee. Even assuming he ekes out a win in November (most of the current polls show this as a toss-up), this economic record in Wisconsin is horrible. And as others have pointed out numerous times on numerous posts, he has the personality and charisma of a head of iceberg lettuce.

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @pseudonymous in nc:

    I believe the specific Schiavo moment for Johnson was when Pammycakes Atlas and Robert Spencer went off to a little gathering of European ‘anti-Islamists’ who turned out to be bona fide white supremacist eliminationist fascists and that those people were now his peers.

    All summer I’ve been reading conservatives hyperventilating about antisemitism in Europe and how Nazism’s coming back (also Eurabia and argle bargle)… and every time I read it I kept thinking back to that event (Gates of Vienna Conference it was called). Funny how back when they were looking for buddies against the Islamo Fascist Horde, they didn’t seem to have any problems cozying up to these actual fascists.

  106. 106.

    Redshift

    @D58826: I know it’s just deliberate fear-mongering, but…

    “These are barbarians,” Boehner said. “They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.”

    If “intent” was ability, Rand Paul would be president.

  107. 107.

    Davis X. Machina

    @feebog:

    …this economic record in Wisconsin is horrible.

    He doesn’t need an economic record to run on. If it’s less than he promised, hey that’s because of the unions.

  109. 109.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @gelfling545: Thank Christ I’m not the only one who read that wrong. Just returned from a lengthy teethbrushing/long mouthwash rinse.

    ETA: same clarification!

  113. 113.

    Patricia Kayden

    @srv: Is the country really torn apart? Sounds kind of melodramatic to me. Yes, we are politically divided but I don’t hate the Republicans I work with or live beside. I gather that a lot of the Rightwing political rhetoric is for $$$ (i.e., Sarah Palin’s grifting).

  117. 117.

    cckids

    @M31:

    Bullying, cowardly child of an aristocratic family with a dark past of sucking up to evil power? America elected him already, twice.

    This sentence is perfection.

  119. 119.

    sm*t cl*de

    Mr. Paul, who is fond of saying that libertarian should not be confused with libertine

    He wants you to be free to do whatever theocrats tell you to do.

  120. 120.

    catclub

    @mb: Well, if Cruz does not get it, the way that the powers that be take it away from him will be very ugly. Cruz has wrapped up the far right wing better than anyone else did in 2008 or 2012, when if the right had united, McCain in 2008 and Mitt in 2012 would not have been able to take it away from the splintered far right.

    Neither one was very popular with the rest of the GOP, but more had more staying power than the rest of the field.

  121. 121.

    chopper

    @M31:

    Bullying, cowardly child of an aristocratic family with a dark past of sucking up to evil power? America elected him already, twice.

    once, actually. Lolz!

  122. 122.

    Citizen Alan

    I’m not saying Sarah Palin looks like a streetwalker in that picture. I’m just saying that if ANY female Democrat of any prominence wore that get-up and had her picture taken in that pose, Republicans would say she looked like a streetwalker.

  123. 123.

    Jeffro

    @Chris: I think it’s because enough of the Washington-NYC media already knows from firsthand experience that Christie’s an a$$h0!3, that they didn’t let the Bridgegate stuff slide. If they’d just liked him a little more, it wouldn’t have been in the news or at least not for too long, and certainly the CW would be that ‘it’s behind him now’…

  125. 125.

    brantl

    Senator Ted Cruz of Texas invoked the redemptive story of his parents, both plagued by too much drinking

    . Shit, if I had Ted for a kid, I’d drink too much, too.

  128. 128.

    Epicurus

    Am I the only person who realizes that Cruz is not eligible to be elected President? Last time I checked, Calgary, Alberta is not part of the U.S., nor were both of his parent U.S. citizens at the time of his birth. Nah. Gunna. Happen. Unless they try to gin up the same stupid arguments which were brought at the time (remember?) when Ahnuld was the Great White Hope of the GOP. “We’ll just amend the Constitution….” Yeah, right. Much more likely that Santorum will be the eventual nominee…I’m making popcorn!

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