Politico: Obama Plan: Destroy Romney
I wanted to note this so I can come back to it over the next year while this strategy plays out, and Obama supporters try to pretend the attacks aren't personal. Does "weird" mean "mormon?"
Meanwhile, the objective media picks a photo of Michelle Bachmann that I'm sure is not meant to imply anything...
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Rick Perry's confederate past?
Texas governor Rick Perry's name has been bubbling just under the surface for a few months now as a possible late entrant into the presidential race. Conservatives and Tea Party folks are eyeing him closely, as he has a solid record of job creation during his tenure, even during the current depression recession jobless recovery. Texas' balanced budget, and friendly business climate, also are attractive, as many believe these types of measures are just the thing we need to pull the country out of its slump.
Perry is so attractive to some folks, he's even ahead of President Obama in a poll here in North Carolina, which Obama narrowly won in 2008. Perry hasn't even declared his candidacy yet, and he's already a front-runner 1000 miles from his home state. That's nothing to sneeze at.
It is, however, entirely predictable that some news organization would run the obligatory hit piece on Perry, and so Salon.com unironically posts their cliche. While nowhere near the vile, vicious attack on Michelle Bachmann that Rolling Stone ran a few weeks ago, the mud it slings is still pretty thin. Perry was apparently endorsed by a secessionist/Confederate organization when he was running for governor. The Perry campaign denies he was ever a member, although he does seem to have had a connection with one officer of the organization that endorsed him, which is sort of to be expected. But smearing a candidate with the reputations of those who endorse him is just as lame as when Republicans made hay over Osama bin Laden pining for a John Kerry administration (although, it should be noted that it was Al Jazeera that originally broadcast the tape about which Kerry complained so loudly, and not, say, Fox News).
I've been reading Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs, Known and Unknown. As a bit of context, Rumsfeld has been in and around the federal government since the early '60s, when he was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican in suburban Chicago. He helped engineer Gerald Ford's ascent to Speaker of the House, served as NATO ambassador in the Nixon administration, was Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense to President Ford, turned around a struggling pharmaceutical company (the one that invented The Pill, interestingly), was tapped to study the issue of ICBMs, and famously was President George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense for most of Bush's two terms. While I found Bush's memoirs to be shallow and uninteresting, a missed opportunity, Rumsfeld is clearly a very bright guy with insight and experience to burn. I'm sure I'll have more to say about him and his book in the future, but what has struck me most from the early parts of the book is this passage, about the campaign of Barry Goldwater:
Now, Rumsfeld takes some shots at the media throughout the book as being uninformed, manipulative, and biased, and I haven't even got to the part about the war in Iraq yet. But what struck me about the quote above is how accurately it still describes the media environment today. Republicans still get smeared as wanting to end Social Security, and supremely unfairly carry around the "racist" tag. In fact, it's tough to find a narrative about a Republican official today that is not one constructed of accusations of hypocrisy, crypto-racism, sexism, and homophobia. Taibbi's piece on Bachmann is a good example. What's the first thing you think of when I say "Tea Party?" Chances are you think, "a bunch of racists." Quick, is Barack Obama for or against gay marriage? What about George W. Bush? Nope. They're both against it. But only one gets smeared as a homophobe for having that position. (Which is not to say that Obama's base of support is not disappointed in that position. But I think it's a tough case to make that Obama did not get a free pass on the issue, whereas Republicans with the same position, who may even belong to a church as stridently anti-gay marriage as Obama's is, get constantly hammered from all sides.) (There may well be other reasons than media bias that this is the case. For example, often it's asserted that Republicans have more to answer for on issues of morality than democrats, and a failure to have what some see as a perfectly consistent stance on moral issues opens them up to more attacks. The issue of morality in politics, and the difference between how Democrats and Republicans are faced with it, will be tackled in a later blog post.)
All this is not to say that there are not hypocrites, racists, sexists, or homophobes out there. But it doesn't pass the smell test that every single Republican candidate over the last 50 years can be credibly tagged with these labels. While the country at large may not know all that much about Rick Perry yet, it's very telling that those in the media are seemingly so worried about his chances that a pre-emptive strike against him as a racist (or at least a wacko secessionist) was required. (And don't try to tell me that the article specifically disclaims any association with racism. The inflammatory headline, and the Photoshopped juxtaposition of Perry with a Confederate flag is proof that that's precisely the association the author sought to make.)
Perry is so attractive to some folks, he's even ahead of President Obama in a poll here in North Carolina, which Obama narrowly won in 2008. Perry hasn't even declared his candidacy yet, and he's already a front-runner 1000 miles from his home state. That's nothing to sneeze at.
It is, however, entirely predictable that some news organization would run the obligatory hit piece on Perry, and so Salon.com unironically posts their cliche. While nowhere near the vile, vicious attack on Michelle Bachmann that Rolling Stone ran a few weeks ago, the mud it slings is still pretty thin. Perry was apparently endorsed by a secessionist/Confederate organization when he was running for governor. The Perry campaign denies he was ever a member, although he does seem to have had a connection with one officer of the organization that endorsed him, which is sort of to be expected. But smearing a candidate with the reputations of those who endorse him is just as lame as when Republicans made hay over Osama bin Laden pining for a John Kerry administration (although, it should be noted that it was Al Jazeera that originally broadcast the tape about which Kerry complained so loudly, and not, say, Fox News).
I've been reading Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs, Known and Unknown. As a bit of context, Rumsfeld has been in and around the federal government since the early '60s, when he was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican in suburban Chicago. He helped engineer Gerald Ford's ascent to Speaker of the House, served as NATO ambassador in the Nixon administration, was Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense to President Ford, turned around a struggling pharmaceutical company (the one that invented The Pill, interestingly), was tapped to study the issue of ICBMs, and famously was President George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense for most of Bush's two terms. While I found Bush's memoirs to be shallow and uninteresting, a missed opportunity, Rumsfeld is clearly a very bright guy with insight and experience to burn. I'm sure I'll have more to say about him and his book in the future, but what has struck me most from the early parts of the book is this passage, about the campaign of Barry Goldwater:
"The [Lyndon] Johnson campaign's strategy soon became clear-- to exploit Goldwater's outspokenness and try to depict him as a dangerous crackpot who would take America into a nuclear war... The "Daisy" ad on television that the Johnson campaign aired... was undoubtedly the most cynical campaign ad ever aired by an incumbent president. It also was among the most effective.... The Johnson campaign didn't stop there. They ran ads showing someone tearing up a Social Security card, implying Barry Goldwater intended to abolish Social Security. Capitalizing on his vote against civil rights, they also prepared a commercial showing a Ku Klux Klansman saying, "I like Barry Goldwater. He needs our help."(Unfortunately, Amazon does not have a "search inside this book" feature yet for this book that I can use to link to the quote, so you'll have to trust me on my transcription.)
Now, Rumsfeld takes some shots at the media throughout the book as being uninformed, manipulative, and biased, and I haven't even got to the part about the war in Iraq yet. But what struck me about the quote above is how accurately it still describes the media environment today. Republicans still get smeared as wanting to end Social Security, and supremely unfairly carry around the "racist" tag. In fact, it's tough to find a narrative about a Republican official today that is not one constructed of accusations of hypocrisy, crypto-racism, sexism, and homophobia. Taibbi's piece on Bachmann is a good example. What's the first thing you think of when I say "Tea Party?" Chances are you think, "a bunch of racists." Quick, is Barack Obama for or against gay marriage? What about George W. Bush? Nope. They're both against it. But only one gets smeared as a homophobe for having that position. (Which is not to say that Obama's base of support is not disappointed in that position. But I think it's a tough case to make that Obama did not get a free pass on the issue, whereas Republicans with the same position, who may even belong to a church as stridently anti-gay marriage as Obama's is, get constantly hammered from all sides.) (There may well be other reasons than media bias that this is the case. For example, often it's asserted that Republicans have more to answer for on issues of morality than democrats, and a failure to have what some see as a perfectly consistent stance on moral issues opens them up to more attacks. The issue of morality in politics, and the difference between how Democrats and Republicans are faced with it, will be tackled in a later blog post.)
All this is not to say that there are not hypocrites, racists, sexists, or homophobes out there. But it doesn't pass the smell test that every single Republican candidate over the last 50 years can be credibly tagged with these labels. While the country at large may not know all that much about Rick Perry yet, it's very telling that those in the media are seemingly so worried about his chances that a pre-emptive strike against him as a racist (or at least a wacko secessionist) was required. (And don't try to tell me that the article specifically disclaims any association with racism. The inflammatory headline, and the Photoshopped juxtaposition of Perry with a Confederate flag is proof that that's precisely the association the author sought to make.)
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