Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Presidential politics That was no win in Iowa for Mitt Romney
Posted by Max Brantley on Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 6:04 AM
The headlines that say Mitt Romney "won" the Iowa caucus by 8 votes are not politically accurate. Rick Santorum "won" the Iowa caucus by finishing in a virtual tie in balloting that still means little, either in the Iowa selection process or the national contest to choose the nominee.
But Romney's showing, percentagewise no better than 2008 (and actually six votes fewer), exhibits his lack of appeal, particularly among the right-wing evangelicals that dominate the Iowa process.
In a normal world, Romney would be well-placed to use his historic centrist appeal as a Massachusetts governor to contrast with Santorum's extremism. Santorum, who'd be happy to see the birth control pill outlawed even for married women, is an extremist. He's so extreme he was soundly defeated for re-election to U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, a critical presidential state. Unfortunately for Romney, the Republican primary is not a normal world and he made his bed some time ago. What profits a man if he gains an eight-vote victory in Iowa by selling his soul?
AND SPEAKING OF IOWA AND RON PAUL: Thanks to legions of young Paultards, Ron Paul finished a creditable third in Iowa, though not on top as some had dreamed. Gene Lyons assesses Paul this week. Simply put, he's nuts (though even a nut can be right now and then.)
By Gene Lyons
RevolutionIs the affair of logical lunatics.
The politics of emotion must appear
To be an intellectual structure. The cause
Creates a logic not to be distinguished
From lunacy…
—Wallace Stevens, “Esthetique du Mal”
Let’s start at the starting place. Rep. Ron Paul has no chance whatsoever of securing the Republican nomination, nor of being elected president under any imaginable circumstances. Ain’t gonna happen. Even Newt Gingrich has basically said he’d vote for President Obama over Paul. Given that Newt would probably back Vladimir Putin over Obama—robust foreign policy, after all—that’s definitely saying something.
So don’t tell me about Paul’s political courage. It’s easy to be a fearless iconoclast when nothing’s at stake. That said, it was heartening to hear the Texas Congressman, during a Fox News-sponsored Iowa debate of all places, stress the similarities between the current “bomb Iran” chorus and the 2003 propaganda campaign that led the U.S. to invade Iraq. Paul dismissed as “absurd” Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann’s assertions that the Iranian government’s “theology” would lead it to start a nuclear war for the sake of national martyrdom.
"To declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims and say all Muslims are the same, this is dangerous talk,” Paul added. “Yeah, there are some radicals. But they don't come here to kill us because we're free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean, that's absurd….The CIA has explained it to us. They said they come here and want to do us harm because we're bombing them."
Actually, Iran and al Qaeda are bitter enemies. Otherwise, Paul’s on target. He also pointed out that the U.S. and Iran haven’t been at war since 1979, as Santorum asserted, but since 1953, when a CIA-sponsored coup overthrew Iran’s elected government and installed the corrupt, dictatorial Shah. For all the current regime’s brutality, that historical grievance is why attacking Iran would only strengthen the Ayatollahs.
It’s precisely such interludes that have led luminaries like Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh and the New Hampshire Union-Leader to declare Paul a dangerous heretic. A bit more surprising is his fan base on the left. “I have big problems w/ Ron Paul on many issues,” tweeted The Nation’s Katrina vandenHeuvel. “But on ending preemptive wars & on challenging bipartisan elite consensus on FP, good he’s in.”
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald went much further. Paul’s “nomination,” he wrote “would mean that it is the Republican candidate—not the Democrat—who would be the anti-war, pro-due-process, pro-transparency, anti-Fed, anti-Wall-Street-bailout, anti-Drug-War advocate (which is why some neocons are expressly arguing they’d vote for Obama over Paul). Is it really hard to see why Democrats hate his candidacy and anyone who touts its benefits?”
Oh please. Inasmuch as Paul’s nomination would also be preceded by signs, portents, graveyards yielding up their dead, and lions whelping in the streets, hating him would be rather a waste of energy.
In the meantime, Talking Points Memo overheard candidate Paul warning the citizens of Sioux Center, Iowa, that land use regulations could lead to dictatorship.
“I’m fearful,” he said “because some people would like us to go all the way to the U.N. and have the U.N. controlling our lands, too.”
Black helicopters anyone? Exactly who these “some people” might be, Paul didn’t say. Of course some people think space aliens monitor their thoughts through fillings in their teeth. Some people even believe that the U.S. government has installed chemical tracking agents in $100 bills.
Oops, actually that was Dr. Paul himself. A 1993 promotional letter for the militia-friendly “Ron Paul Newsletter,” published the last time a Democratic president provoked apocalyptic fears among Moron-Americans, helpfully explained: “The totalitarian bills were tinted pink and blue and brown, and blighted with holograms, diffraction gratings, metal and plastic threads, and chemical alarms. It was a portable inquisition, a paper ‘third degree,’ to allow the feds to keep track of American cash, and American citizens.”
Send that tainted cash straight to Ron Paul. He’d know what to do with it. Today, of course, the candidate says he neither wrote nor read any of the crackpot ravings in the “Ron Paul Newsletter.” Not the stuff about how Martin Luther King was a pedophile, how Israeli agents bombed the World Trade Center, about the coming American race-war, or the “federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS,” none of it.
Even “The Original Famous Ron Paul Survival Kit,” an official World War II US Army ammo holder filled “with highly liquid, small-denomination silver and gold coins for hand-to-hand use” was supposedly news to Ron Paul.
Sure it was. How could anybody doubt him?
Look, this guy’s no more a Libertarian than I’m a Rastafarian. Even when he’s right, as on bombing Iran, he’s wrong. (Hint: it’s about the Jews.) What he’s got against the Federal government is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Anyway, call me old-fashioned, but sanity matters.
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Comments (28)
Showing 1-28 of 28
Re the GOP nd the current crop:
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche
An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.
George Bernard Shaw
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dislike
Selling your soul is a bipartisan standard. See Obama-Gitmo.
May I double post this comment at Gene's column, Max? Thank you.
Gene, agreed that Iowa doesn't matter if viewed from your perspective. The worrying thing for me is the legion of Paulistas who were able to propel the old Texan to a three-way tie. That is the real significance of Iowa.
Perhaps my own bias against libertarians as eternal adolescents who never left their late night dorm discussions is clouding my judgment---Pilkington shares it.
In this essay, he skewers, then slices and dices Rothbard and the Austrians at the Mises Institute. Let's just call it what it is---an evisceration.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/phi…
A delicious taste of it:
"Libertarians – and their Austrian brethren – since they are, at heart, metaphysicians and cultists, are often proselytizing rather than engaging in a discussion, even about the most mundane and non-theoretical of topics; such as, say, the structure of the modern banking system. Anything that calls into question any of their principles is quickly steamrolled over with either mounds of rhetoric or sophistical arguments."
I found this other commentary by Irish writer Philip Pilkington---newly discovered by me---to be thought provoking. I have to read much more of him before I am ready to endorse his ideas, but he certainly intrigues. What do you think?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/phi…
ND '75. Sometimes I get so tired of the push back. When President Obama tried to close Guantanamo, Congress would not allocate the money. To paraphrase Ta-Nehisi Coates (I think it was him), "Every man is a prophet until he faces a Congress."
Everything Charles Pierce has to say about the Iowa clusterf**k is worth reading. And why are writers like Pierce and Coates relegated to low circulation magazines like The Atlantic and Esquire, yet twits like Brooks and Douthat are given megaphones at the NY Times?
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/
Yes, sanity matters, Max. A sane person would know that many on the Iranian street are quite pro-American. That us not to say they aren't critical of us and at odds with many of our policies. Paul is right about one or two things and is a lunatic on everything else.
My mantra for 2012 to disaffected Obama voters has been just two words---Supreme Court. I will now add two more words---bombing Iran.
Disaffected Obama voters may well vote for him again this year, considering the alternative. Remember what Woody Allen said about the guy, saliva dribbling from his mouth, wandering about with a shopping bag screaming about socialism? Romney is that guy.
And Dustin McDaniel said, "I campaigned for Obama in Iowa, South Carolina, and North Carolina in 2008." Arkansas fans, remember those words when old Dusty runs for Governor. Sticks and Stones may break bones, but Dusty's words and actions for Obama will hurt him.
Orval, if that's the great Greedy Old Pricks campaign plan against Dustin, wow!
I guess with the GOP dominated by the monied class, you wouldn't be expect to go after him as the godfather of TIF but some of us will. And who are you supporting in the clown car (better speak up for Perry fast as he may be gone by evening as well as Bachmann)?
Of the virtual dead heat between Santorum and Romney in Iowa, Paul Begala knocks one outta the ballpark before Mary's even schlepped his Wheaties, opining of Romney:
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but when you can't beat the Man-on-Dog guy, who lost his home state by 18 percent, you stink. You really stink."
It's almost 8 a.m. -- 10 a.m. your time -- and we can't WAIT for Michele Bachmann's press conference in just moments!
She's cancelled her planned trip to South Carolina and --
What can it all MEAN?
Alice Stewart? Are you networking? Getting those resumes out? Mulling Avon?
What I find shocking is the number of women who obviously voted the anti-birth control ticket.
As someone raising a daughter, I find it disgusting that many women don't believe she has a right to control her own body.
They think their bodies are best controlled by men, and are willing to put in place a government to enforce that role.
Women make up a majority of this country, but they are so danged subservient to anyone with a penis.
Make no mistake: If it becomes illegal for a woman to take birth control, it will only be because other women decided it was best.
I thought women were my favorite things in life, but this morning I am angry at how you are meekly allowing the enslavement of my child to men.
Romney should have been 4th or 5th, so finishing 1st(barely) is a good sign of things to come. I look forward to(should it happen), the debate between Obama and Romney. Neither can run nor hide and it should come down to the last 30 days.
It's the economy stupidz and should it improve going into the election, it will be quite difficult to beat Obama. Its a long road between now and Nov 2nd - so let the games begin!
And Isn't it wonderful to watch the wicked witch of Georgia lose his cool? His stripes runneth over.
Norma, she's definitely packing it in according to TPM and seconded at CNN.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/upda…
Occupy, it is a puzzlement to me, too. Secondarily, I am puzzled by why so many people vote against their economic self-interest and that of their peers---that group includes a lot of men.
It may be worse than you know, Occupy. From an article yesterday about Santorum:
"In 2011 alone, state GOP lawmakers introduced 600 bills restricting abortion and passed a record 91 of those bills, and five states placed new restrictions on access to birth control and family planning. The 24 states that passed abortion restrictions stopped short of banning abortion entirely, only because they would face lengthy court battles if they passed bills that fly in the face of Supreme Court precedents preventing states from placing an "undue burden" on a woman's ability to seek an abortion."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/r…
P.S. God told Michele he changed his mind. She's bye-bye.
Perry too.
God's looking fickle. Or spending WAY too much time straightening out Ted Haggard.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/ri…
"[Perry] was a gaffe machine in cowboy boots powered by oil money and rich Texans who drooled over the idea that Perry would open Washington's doors to all of their big dollar dreams."
"Young collegians will wonder how a man so stupid could ever think that he might become president. Hell, even Ronald Reagan learned his lines."
P.P.S. Michele hasn't even started yet. Eighteen minutes late. Everybody knows she's out, but apparently she can't stop crying.
Makeup's had to redo her completely twice already.
I really don't understand the confusion of Occupy and Outlier over people, including women, voting against their own best self interests.
These people actually believe their religious brainwashing about women's choice, abortion, and same-sex equality. On those topics, they operate at something less than middle-school level -- all yucky giggly-naughty.
All objections on both topics are religion-based. That's it. Nothing more.
Religion has nothing to do with rationality or facts and everything to do with obeying orders in order to belong, much less live, in many locales.
What do you think Michele is talking about RIGHT NOW? "Taxpayer-funded abortions." "The Holy Scriptures. The Bible."
There you have it.
I don't find it confusing at all that sheeple vote as they're told.
I DO find it insulting that so many people are so reluctant to call it what it is, and to give "religion" a pass. More than insulting -- it's dangerous for America and our Constitution, for our schools and our future, what's happening.
Oh, well. Michele's stumbling over her cliche-riddled script now. Gotta go.
Face is not moving. Lots of botox went into Michele. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Outlier -
Is it REALLY appropriate to snark about the physiognomy of public figures, especially when her eyes are so close together?
Boy Current TV goofed up letting Al Gore & blondie and the Young Turks cover the Iowa Caucus last night. I went sound to sleep in about 10 minutes. The group tried to be bipartisan by trying real hard to come up with nice things to say about the mental midgets in the race last night. Thinking up good things to say about Charles Manson would have been easier.
Current should have just had Keith Olbermann screaming at the video for 4 hours, since screaming at the video is all an intelligent person could or should do. Head lice have America's best interest at heart more than Romney, Paul, Bachmann, Newt and ole Man On Dog. If the Iowa Caucus doesn't send the message to the world that America is one silly, FK'ed up country, I don't know what else will.
I wish I could pull a Rip Van Winkle until next January. We're about to witness the biggest cash orgy in the history of US elections. Come spring Occupy heads will be bloodied from coast to coast. Republicans in Congress & Mark Pryor will obstruct like never before. Our TVs will be filled with the smirking faces of McConnell & Cantor. And the Supreme Court ® will decide on 2 of Obama's biggest programs and we already know how they roll.
It's good that Bachmann & Perry are out...2 less dingbats to muddy up the TV. But it will still be nails on chalkboards with the GOPissers who are left. Obama is going to use a recess appointment...that's a good thing, but he better start talking about the bill he just signed that could sock people like me away for the rest of time....and hey....lost in prison might not be so bad, I'll miss HBO and snuggling with mag on cold winter nights, but really....not much else at this point.
Life sucks and then you wake up and it's the year 2000 and you get Bush & Cheney for the next 8 years and now it's Shit12 and no arrows point up. Too bad Ecstasy isn't an over the counter medicine...
While the puppet show in Iowa is distracting attention the Republic is under one more serious assault:
"Congress is about to pass internet censorship, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity.
http://americancensorship.org/
Want to know the state of Newton Leroy 'Poot' Gingrich's campaign? The little girl in the picture sums it up nicely:
http://yhoo.it/xzO6be
Adding the Southern Strategy to Iowa:
"Santorum Singles Out Black People as Dependent on Government"
http://news.yahoo.com/santorum-singles-bla…
Time for a laugh. Driftglass celebrates the end of "The Iron Loony" campaign by photoshopping her with Margaret Thatcher.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/01/iro…
Just so Noot doesn't feel left out due to his no good very bad day in Iowa, driftglass photoshops him onto a movie poster for "Land of the Lost".
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/01/iow…
Montana, Montana, glory of the west
Of all the states from coast to coast
You're easily the best!
I don't know if that is the official state song but I remember singing it when I spent two halcyon years in the eastern shadows of Glacier National Park at ages 12 and 13. Max posted about this a couple days ago, but it bears repeating. Put this in your pipe and smoke it Messrs. Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Stevens.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/c…
I wish Bachmann had been more successful. http://haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth.co…
Thanks for bringing it up, outlier....who in the hell wants to see a big Hollywood movie about Margaret Thatcher? Who on this blog gives a damn about Margaret Thatcher? Yeah, Meryl can act like a mofo....but why not Lizzy Borden or an Eve Arden biopic? Margaret Thatcher.....really?
DBI, I always questioned how much of the feminine perspective Maggie brought to her job. I think she had so much testosterone that she likely had to shave 2 or 3 times a week. Also, Andrew Sullivan always had the hots for her. And Ronald Reagan, too. Now I'm confused.
Anyway here is another great photoshop and Andrew dancing the light fantastic with his male idol, St. Ronnie.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/12/all…
I don't think he ever got to dance with Maggie, but I am SURE she would have insisted on leading.
I meant to note, also, the wistfulness in Saline's comment. Is it because he secretly had a "thing" about Michele? Or is the wistfulness because no one reads his blog or even comments there. Whatever, he is just so damned earnest. He needs to inject some playfulness into his rants. Besides Frank Schaeffer and Milton Friedman are so yesterday. The world has moved on.
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