Watching Rs leave the media climate of DC for the Steve King Empire of Iowa is like watching people jump through a dimensional portal.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 23, 2015
If you’re one of the BJ readers who objects to reading about Repub shenanigans, get ready to do some major scroll-bys this weekend. It’s time for the Iowa Freedom Summit, “Getting America Back on Track”, paid for by Citizens United and hosted by Rep. Steve King, as helpfully annotated by Paul Waldman in the Washington Post:
… After learning that Michelle Obama would be sitting at Tuesday’s State of the Union with Ana Zamora, a 20-year-old college student who came to America at the age of one and can stay because of Obama’s executive action on “dreamers,” King tweeted:
#Obama perverts ‘prosecutorial discretion’ by inviting a deportable to sit in place of honor at#SOTU w/1st Lady. I should sit with Alito.
The NYTimes reports that “Jorge Ramos, the Univision and Fusion television anchor who is often called the Walter Cronkite of Latino America” will be covering the Freedom Summit, so Rep. King’s ugly comments — and any inapt up-sucking by the attendees –will be scrutinized by media with a much larger reach than TPM.
NPR (Nice Polite Republicans) is more diplomatic:
Take a nearly century-old theater in downtown Des Moines. Fill it to capacity, — that’s 1,200 audience members and another 200 credentialed media — bring in a lineup that includes almost 10 would-be, might-be, could-be Republican presidential hopefuls, and it’s looking like the 2016 campaign is officially underway…
The event is King’s attempt to have an outsized impact on the outcome of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, which will take place just one year from now.
King’s big issue is immigration, and he wants candidates to go on the record. He wants them to oppose any kind of deal with Democrats and the White House that would lead to the kind of immigration reform that many leaders at the Republican National Committee have suggested might help the party begin to cut into the huge gap that Democrats enjoy when it comes to the Latino vote..
Apart from many paid political analysts/consultants/pundits, would-be bagmen, irritable RWNJs, and a broad spectrum of media people hoping for a particularly spectacular meltdown, the marquee attendees break down into three overlapping groups:
– “Serious” candidates: Cruz, Christie, Huckabee, Santorum, Perry, Walker
– “Brand managers” looking to keep their grift name in the media: Palin, Trump, Gingrich, Carson, Fiorina
– Local bigwigs & paleocon favorites: Joni ‘Breadbags’ Ernst, Iowa governor Terry Brandstad, Chuck Grassley, Heritage Foundation’s Jim deMint, John Bolton, Utah senator & Tea Party darling Mike Lee, et al.
Slate‘s John Dickerson, as always, focuses on the inside baseball:
… Most people in Iowa’s political class have an interest in getting things started early. They want the state to be the first robust contest of the nominating process. They covet the visits and the personal calls from the candidates. Some want to get paid. The earlier that candidates start, the more they need pricey strategists and paid organizers. So lots of people have an incentive to push a hurry-up message.
The upside of starting early is obvious. “This isn’t like a normal election, where you convince people,” says Craig Robinson, the founder of the Iowa Republican website. “You have to convince them and keep them convinced.” That takes skill, and that skill is getting snapped up by other campaigns…
Organizations are usually staffed with operatives who have well-established networks from working previous election cycles. Robinson calls them tribes. David Kochel, who oversaw Mitt Romney’s Iowa operation and who helped get Sen. Joni Ernst elected in November, leads one tribe. A.J. Spiker and Steve Grubbs, who are backing Sen. Rand Paul, each represent their own tribes. Christie’s backers—Jeff Boeyink and Chuck Larson—represent tribes, too. The allegiances to the tribe are sometimes closer than the allegiances to the candidates. This came through clearly in a conversation with one operative who said of a talented volunteer, “He’s not with Bush, he’s with me.”….
Noticably absent from this scrum: Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul. Those guys are saving their energies for Sunday, when the NYTimes reports “An invitation-only group of 2016 hopefuls will travel to a resort near Palm Springs, Calif., for the Koch brothers’ annual winter seminar, kicking off the so-called Koch primary…”
Everybody get rrrrready to rrrrrrrrumble…
Utter lack of self-awareness (& thus the ability 2 be shamed) is both the most infuriating quality of RW & its most valuable political asset
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 24, 2015
Tommy
I don’t understand Iowa. I live in rural Illinois and feel like they are my sister state. I get strange events. You got “Corn Day” in the town my parents live in. Where you pay $5 and people walk around with buckets of corn. You eat corn until you are almost sick to your stomach.
You can never as a politician miss Corn Day. But they don’t say stupid shit, because you don’t mess with Corn Day. Nobody messes with that day.
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
It’s like Derby here. The unspoken thing is that even the most bitter political rivals have to act decently toward one another when crossing paths, and what happens at Derby off camera stays at Derby.
raven
Rest in Peace Ernie Banks!
Hal
Huh? Is Alito also deportable? I don’t get King’s comparison. Not that I think deporting Alito is a bad idea.
Baud
I would, except you and Betty are the only regular posters we have left.
Villago Delenda Est
Proof there is no God: this festering nest of evil will not be struck by a meteor.
Keith G
@raven: Let’s play two!
Re the post:
::Raises hand::
The John Dickerson (one of the last true political beat reporters) quote explains in part why I tend to roll my eyes. Our attention to the minutia of their deep inside shenanigans will not advance our runners along the base path (back to Ernie).
I want to see what my tribe is doing. I am in the camp of, “This is our election to lose” and I am not so sure that we won’t do our best to lose it.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: RIP indeed.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est: The story is…is that if such a god conjured up such an ill tempered celestial projectile, it would have to take out a good share of the DNC as well. Maybe their evil is more evil by omission, but it’s evil nonetheless.
Baud
@Keith G:
That’s the sort of Democratic optimism that will ensure victory for our side!
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Meh. Why should God waste his time doing what midterm voters will not?
Buddy H
I was worried when I read fox news was starting a Spanish-language channel. Will they do to hispanics what they did to old white men and women? (Fill their heads with lies and propaganda?)
My open thread subject: It has gradually dawned on me (I’m not the brightest bulb) that I shouldn’t patronize businesses that do the most tv advertising. It seems the more tv ads a company buys, the lousier their product/prices/customer service/honesty will be.
There is a car dealership in my neck of the woods. A commercial every three minutes. Sometimes two in a row. And yet people have told me it is a rip off experience. Also, I’m always seeing commercials for a certain dental company. Old-fashioned b&w receptionist transforms into a modern facility. And yet they get consistently horrible online reviews. I would be afraid to go near them.
This hit home for me because our youngest son got into a fender bender. I didn’t know where to go, so I took it to a collision center that advertises on tv. We had to wait one month, and it was so expensive it wound up costing more than the value of the car. I guess all these tv commercials are expensive, so the customer foots the bill. The insurance company kicked in the value of the car, but my son had to make up the difference, almost 800 bucks… I can’t help but think if we’d gone with some small body shop who doesn’t blow its budget on silly commercials with puppets and soundeffects, the car would have been fixed in one week at half the price.
Baud
Elections matter (via LGM)
SRW1
Does the event include a competition of ‘Castrating Pigs for Freedumb’?
I mean, it’s a rural state and as we have learned in the last election, castrating pigs is a skill that predestines for higher office.
Raven
Long after retiring, Banks recalled the sweltering midsummer’s day in 1969 when he bubbled over in a phrase that became his trademark.
“We were in first place, and all the reporters were already in the locker room when I arrived at Wrigley for a game with the Cardinals,” Banks told The Arizona Daily Star. “I walked in and said: ‘Boy, it’s a beautiful day. Let’s play two.’ They all thought I was crazy.”
Iowa Old Lady
I don’t understand King’s obsession with immigration. Iowa is so whitebread that some of us apparently have sufficient empty bags to wear on our feet. I’ve never heard anyone bring up immigration in a political argument.
David Fud
@Villago Delenda Est: I would contend that the better target to remove the blight would be Davos. 80 billionaires and all their hangers-on in one hit would remove a significant nest of ignorance from the earth. It might remove a nice ski resort, as noted in an earlier thread, but it won’t be ski-able due to global warming in any event.
SRW1
@Iowa Old Lady:
Well, dark flour contaminates the flour pool.
ETA: Isn’t a common observation that the degree of xenophobia is inversely related to the distance of its objects?
Mustang Bobby
@Iowa Old Lady: He’s worried about cantaloupe smuggling or something.
Actually, I heard that there’s a lot of immigrants working in the poultry and food processing plants in Iowa. Is that the case? Or maybe he’s confusing them with the migrant farm workers who travel from state to state working the harvests…”Migrant” meaning they travel, not that they’re from another country. Who knows what sloshes around in his brainpan.
Peale
Yes, I live in a state whose legislature is so corrupt that the US attorney just promised to dismantle it, but I still prefer the graft to the puffery and peacock egos of Iowa.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Iowa Old Lady:
A Latino scared his mama that one time. Or maybe it was an Italian. They weren’t quite white yet back then.
Groucho48
I enjoy reading about Repub shenanigans as much as the next liberal. I will say, though, that I wish liberal blogs has two or three positive topics about liberal things for every mocking or /outrage topic about those shenanigans.
I mean, the Reps repeat their stupidities endlessly,, the liberal world reacts with mocking and /outrage about the stupidities, the MSM picks up on the stupidities because that’s all the blogosphere is talking about, and all the liberal stuff dies in the ground.
It would be very refreshing if blogs like Balloon Juice devoted at least one topic a day to some liberal talking point/ development. Bernie Sanders has been posting a lot of provocative and interesting stuff on Facebook, for example. I never see it mentioned anywhere. Elizabeth Warren is mentioned a lot, but, how many full length discussions do we see about her ideas? There are some very interesting things going on in blue states but we only hear about them in passing.
Richard Mayhew posts a pretty fair number of topics about how well Obamacare is doing, along with a lot of wonderful neutral analysis of the health care field. Kay has some solid objective reports from the field. But, other than that, how many front pagers regularly post more positive, liberal topics than they do mocking or /outraged topics about right wing stuff? And, that’s pretty much the standard for most liberal blogs.
Steeplejack (phone)
Sitting in the cell phone lot at Dulles waiting to pick up a friend. Just flashed to how bad it was to coordinate and connect in such situations before cell phones. But I know which door she’ll be coming out and will know exactly when.
Also, Soul Town on Sirius.
JGabriel
Hal:
Alito doesn’t attend The State Of The Union Address anymore. He quit attending in a huff after being mocked for the Alito Grimace he displayed when President Obama criticized the Citizens United decision in the 2010 SOTU.
So King’s I should sit with Alito swipe is a actually a slightly sophisticated rhetorical switcheroo – same grammatical structure, different implication for humorous effect. Gotta give the asshole credit for that one, even if I think he pulled it off purely by accident.
PurpleGirl
Billmon:
…Utter lack of self-awareness (& thus the ability 2 be shamed)
I think Billmon meant the INability…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Groucho48: I understand the feeling, and I kinda agree. I got tired of Olbermann’s show on MSNBC for that reason, and it’s one reason why Rachel’s and Chris Hayes’s shows can be tiresome. But it’s a losing battle, I think. Outrage sells.
There are sites out there for a more positive spin on much of the news. E.g. The Obama Diary and SmartyPants are a couple.
Read widely – it helps to keep one sane. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack (phone)
@PurpleGirl:
“And the lack of ability” is implied, I think.
Elizabelle
@Groucho48: WORD!!
Agree with all that you wrote. Why help disseminate GOP and conservative idiocy?
Why aren’t we talking about more important things (and we do, often, midway through a thread …)
Elizabelle
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Agree that outrage (and controversy, even if fake) sell.
We need to get better about directing the outrage to targets that deserve it and where some thought, solutions and action are in order.
The fake outrages are there to sate viewers/readers and distract from getting interested in the real ones. The liberal blogosphere picks up the rightwing outraging and magnifies it.
Stop that shit.
JGabriel
Harper’s via DKos:
I just wanna say right now: I had no idea fur seals were Republicans.
Baud
@Groucho48:
Thanks for that.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel:
Makes you rethink the outrage about seal clubbing, doesn’t it?
Hologram Sam
“At times things are so fine, and at times they’re not”
I love this unreleased Beatle song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsGj32Vp7vc&feature=youtu.be
I’ve heard these songs over the years (I was a 1970s bootleg boy) but not recently. A few years ago, I began teaching myself Beatle songs on the ukulele. i LOVE playing “That Means A Lot” (I’ve never cared for any other version except the Beatles’). I started on the uke playing ’50s Buddy Holly and Everly Bros. songs. They tend to follow the same progression, although Buddy’s songwriting did interesting things with those same three/four chords. But playing early Beatles songs gave me an understanding of Paul & John’s amazing melodic inventiveness: they use the same chords from the ’50s, but he way they put them together is totally different and thrilling. “That Means A Lot” is so fun to play! Interesting that something they tossed off and never bothered to release would be a classic if any other band invented it.
JGabriel
@Omnes Omnibus: I think I still stand on the side of not clubbing baby seals to death … but, yeah, it definitely complicates the issue.
WereBear
@Buddy H: It is what broadcast television has become. And Newton Minow thought it was a “vast wasteland” in 1961. If he only knew!
The audience for broadcast is shrinking. It’s a feedback death spiral. The more it chases the easily gulled and minimally sophisticated — The History Channel becomes the Bible Channel, the Learning Channel becomes the Bigfoot channel, Arts and Entertainment becomes the Hillbilly Handfishing channel — the more viewers leave.
And they became the Lowest Possible Denominator in the first place because (thanks to their own form of deregulation) they no longer had to make any pretense of public service or actual news or serious drama or groundbreaking comedy — and slowly stopped providing such. It warms my heart that this also dearly cost them viewers.
With the Internet acting as the Gutenberg technological advancement that changed everything, people no longer had to put up with the paltry offerings sliced ever thinner with ads. In my childhood in the sixties, an hour show was 56 minutes long. Now? 42 minutes.
It has become the last refuge of scoundrels.
buddy h
@WereBear: so true. And it seems they’re coming after PBS. I’m seeing more questionable stuff there as well. I found it interesting that when they wanted to remake COSMOS, they ended up on fox. They said no other station would give them complete control. I assume PBS was the first place they approached.
Seeing George F. Kermit the Frog Will on the Roosevelt special was odd. I wonder if that’s the only way he could get funding for the documentary: “put in someone fair and unbalanced.”
WereBear
Fact is, we do talk about the liberal stuff, ALL THE TIME, as we pick apart the Republican stupidity. All the MSM wants to talk about is stupidity.
There’s your real problem.
JPL
@raven: The NYTimes has a nice obit.
When talking about expressing opinions, he said “You can’t convince a fool against his will.” How right!
Keith G
@Baud: optimism without the reality to back it up is just so much masturbatory behavior. of course, masturbation ain’t all bad but it’s always a good idea to be pointed towards a direction of realistic opportunities and realistic expectations. I know Democrats can make good things happen I’m just not so sure that when push comes to shove they (as a party) will be strong advocates, tough bareknuckle advocates, for the policies needed by the lower third of our social economic system in order to rally the enthusiasm we need to get the votes we would like.
I say that because I’m afraid we might be in a bit of a pinch. The power structure of the party is still a bit too closely associated with the old DLC. With labor power nearly eviscerated, the type of power needed on the left sometimes just cannot overcome the demands put on it by the strength of the financial industry whose money many Democrats are addicted to.
Baud
@Keith G:
As is pessimism.
Zinsky
I grew up in Iowa and we used to have intelligent, honorable politicians like former governor Harold Hughes and Senator Tom Harkin. Now they have the Pig Castrator and the fascist Steve King. I am now ashamed to say that I was born there.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@buddy h: There’s an interesting backstory on the reboot of Cosmos. Seth MacFarlane made his millions on Fox. It’s not surprising that he would use his big feet to get it on there when other networks (other than NatGeo) balked.
Cheers,
Scott.
buddy h
@Zinsky: I grew up in Iowa and we used to have intelligent, honorable politicians like former governor Harold Hughes and Senator Tom Harkin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA0wKeokWUU
I had more respect for Harkin before I learned about his involvement with the supplement industry. As a person who has been personally harmed by bad, unregulated snake oil, it bugged me big time. I’d read about it a few years before, but seeing the above John Oliver segment hit it close to home for me.
kc
Let’s hope one of the servers sets his cell phone to record.
kc
@Tommy:
I thought you were in Missouri?
danielx
@Elizabelle:
I’d say ‘know your enemy’, except that generally speaking we know already. One can generally guess what the Emperor of Crazy (Louie Gohmert), for example, will say about any given issue.
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
It’s a more socially acceptable way of saying you hate non-whites than using the N-word.
Buddy H
@kc: Let’s hope one of the servers sets his cell phone to record.
After what happened to poor Mitt, I would imagine all servers will be searched for wires and have their cell phones confiscated for the duration of the event. They learn from their mistakes, I’ll give them that.
danielx
So let’s see, we have the wingnut,er, grassroots convention in Iowa and the corporate Rs in Palm Springs. The only question about what will be said in Iowa is which potential candidate will say something truly embarrassing, not that those folks are capable of acknowledging it. The real action will be in Palm Springs, where the only interest the attendees have in grass is walking on it.
mai naem mobile
I was in a parking lot yesterday and saw an older woman helping an even older woman into a car yesterday. Pretty good chance both were on SS and medicare. The car had a Ben Carson sticker on it. I wanted to walk up to them and give them a reality slap and tell them what they were going to do without medicare and how they thought Ben Carson had the right prescription for the USA! being that he didn’t have a lick of governing experience. Fucking fools.
kindness
Thank God Charles Pierce & others like him are willing to do this so we don’t have to. When you are around that much sureity of purpose and closeness to God….it certainly is sickening. That these people think they are anyone’s moral betters…that isn’t the Jesus I was raised with.
Just imagine what spiking their punch bowl with hallucinogens would do.
WereBear
@mai naem mobile: I understand the impulse, but they don’t feel a reality slap even when Reality itself is delivering it.
dp
Poor Bobby Jindal didn’t get invited to either one.
Baud
@dp:
LOL. Maybe the events were located in no-go zones.
low-tech cyclist
@Villago Delenda Est:
Which one – the Freedumb Summit, or the Koch Brothers winter confab?
God, if you can only spare one meteor, please aim it at the Kochs and their friends.
low-tech cyclist
@kc:
Indeed. But I bet that ever since the 47% tape, the Kochs have had the help at their confabs screened for electronic devices as they show up for work.
HRA
@Groucho48:
How are you going to get positive news when the DNC has gone underground for the last 6 years and the RNC is out there grabbing the news? Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are only 2 in Congress out of many liberals. Except for those Liberals opposing the president, the others are underground, too. Besides a short response from Nancy Pelosi, no one else has stood up and addressed Boehner’s stupidity in inviting Netanyahu. I think we can assume they like what Boehner did to President Obama. They really did not want him to be the nominee or to win anyway.
News is being made on the R side with all the supposed candidates out front in the news. What is going on in the L side is the acceptance of Bill Clinton getting a 3rd term. That is what I hear from my L friends and they do not like it at all. A lot of them are going to register Independent.
delk
Hmmm, I thought the Iowa Freedom Summit was when my husband and I crossed the Illinois border to get married.
Mike in NC
My first and only visit to Des Moines was nearly 20 years ago. The first store I happened to stop into had Rush Limbaugh blaring on the radio at ear-splitting volume. I couldn’t wait to get out of town.
mai naem mobile
@dp: Steve King must have checked out Jindal’s calves out and thought they were watermelon sized, what with Jindal’s skin shade and all, you have to check out his calves.
catclub
@Steeplejack (phone):
Tom Tancredo’s mother?
catclub
@Zinsky:
I think the combination of Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley is the widest ideological split for any two senators from a given state. Any other nominees? Serving at the same time.
Did Jesse Helms and Sam Irvin serve at the same time? (Actually one suspects Sam had some old time democratic racism in there.)
Woodrowfan
@buddy h: Ken Burns really like George Will. No idea why, but he does.
Keith G
@Baud: I gave you some reasons why I’m cautious. Would you like to give me a reason or two why I should not be?
WereBear
@Woodrowfan: Probably a baseball thing. Because heaven knows George Will doesn’t have too much about him that is likeable.
BillinGlendaleCA
@mai naem mobile: Nah, Kenneth the Page has his own gig with a prophet that can raise the dead. It’s the same gig that Gov. Goodhair did in 2011, worked out OK for him.
Buddy H
@WereBear: heaven knows George Will doesn’t have too much about him that is likeable.
Kermit the Frog with lockjaw.
If I were Michael Moore I’d be worried. Did you see the “Fuc_ You Michael Moore” poster Sarah Palin posed with? The “o”s in Moore are cross-hairs. Remember what happened to the last person in Sarah’s crosshairs.
Baud
@Keith G:
We won last two presidential elections, we have better policies and people, and we have more potential voters than the GOP does.
WereBear
Steve King is pro-puppy mill. If toddlers could be rendered down for their organs in a profitable manner, I’m sure he’d be a shill for that industry, too.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@catclub:
Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman from one state north.
ruemara
Re: hitting Davros(Demos?) or Iowa Freedom Summit with a meteor. A good, just and proactive deity can do both with 2 micrometeors. The combination of acceleration with just the right amount of mass suffices.
As I always say, the outrage sells. It keeps people interested. Not terribly informed but interested.
WereBear
@ruemara: Were I a deity, I would prefer to activate an overwhelming self-awareness that would lead to a transformative personality transplant.
But then I’d be crushing free will. And I’d rather crush George Will :)
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
Couldn’t he just create a plague that targeted only assholes?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson?
He does not come off well in Perlstein’s Nixonland
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Buddy H: Why is anyone talking about Michael Moore? Not rhetorical, I haven’t heard his name before in this little dust up in a couple years. What brought him to their little minds?
WereBear
And it could only be cured by going to therapy!
Pogonip
@Villago Delenda Est: Why should God clean up the mess voters made? At some point you gotta let the kids learn that if they don’t clean up their own mess, it’ll just sit there.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
According to Newsmax on the mobile site, Moore said something about American Sniper.
catclub
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: Nope. [Serving at same time]
Norm Coleman started serving in 2003. Wellstone died in 2002.
WereBear
@Pogonip: While it’s a sensible sentiment, we aren’t dealing with children who have the ability to learn.
We are dealing with fanatical cultists, who wouldn’t learn a lesson if it beat them with a 2×4.
That is why, no matter how terrible their lives become, they will not change. Any more than some poor slob in the grip of the Moonies stops and asks themselves, “Do I really want to be malnourished and unbathed and selling flowers to the reluctant?”
If we recognize them as brainwashed people who are manipulated by Faux News and their own media stars, their churches and their peers, it all makes much more sense than treating them as capable adults.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve lost that window into wingnuttery
buddy h
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: On twitter, Michael Moore said his uncle was killed by a sniper in WWII. His family always thought of snipers as cowards. That set off the Clint Eastwood fans.
Roger Moore
@buddy h:
Somehow the bit about his uncle being killed by a sniper got left out by the outrage machine. Amazing how that happens.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@WereBear:
To apply Ambrose Bierce, nay, it is the first.
WereBear
@jake the antisoshul soshulist: True! Bierce, as always, got it right.
rikyrah
@Mustang Bobby:
this is true.