Berry Craig: “I have a message,” Paul also said in his victory speech, “– a message from the people of Kentucky, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: ‘We’ve come to take our government back!’”
Corporations Are a Mitt’s Best Friend
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Michael Sigman: Picking up on the Supreme Court’s gargantuan gift to Republican candidates in the 2010 Citizens United decision, the Mittster went all Soylent Green on an Iowa heckler, opining, “Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are.”
What Does the Vitter-Paul Resolution to Amend the Constitution Solve, Exactly?
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Michele Waslin: In the latest attack on the Constitution and U.S. citizenship, Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution (S. J. RES. 2) last week proposing an amendment to the constitution to limit citizenship to children born in the U.S.
Tpaw and the Campaign ‘Autohagiography’
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Michael Sigman: Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty this week joined Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls who’ve published campaign books that might best be called “autohagiographies.”
Rand Paul and Rebel Flag Republicans
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Berry Craig: Paul, who beat moderate Democrat Jack Conway, ran unabashedly as a tea party Republican. In Kentucky and elsewhere, a lot of latter day Johnny Rebs seem to be tea party Republicans.
Civic-Minded Plutocrats
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Joseph Palermo: Wouldn’t it be something if the Bin Ladens of the world funneled untraceable cash into Republican candidates’ coffers because they know they can count on the GOP to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two of their greatest recruiting vehicles?
Kentucky’s Drive By Candidate
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Berry Craig: So, the stark choice for Kentucky voters is this: a moderate Democrat who understands Kentucky’s problems and needs and has a plan for creating jobs versus an ideologue Republican/Tea Partier with no record, no understanding of the state and a chain saw for a plan
“Run, Rand, Run!”
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Berry Craig: Kentucky’s Tea Party-tilting Republican U.S. Senate candidate recently stopped in Louisville and Pineville for “meet and greet” sessions with voters. In Louisville, he pulled a speak and scram. In Pineville, Paul just skedaddled.
Rand Paul Heads for the Hills
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Berry Craig: Of course, not all Republicans are bigots. But Paul and his pals are more proof — as if proof were needed — that the GOP is mainly what the Southern Democrats were in slavery and Jim Crow days: the white folks’ party.
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
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Berry Craig: Bottom line: It’s plain loco for liberals to punish Democrats for being insufficiently liberal by staying home on election day and letting the Obama’s-a-Kenyan-Islamo-Socialist crowd win.
Poison Populism: Rand Paul’s Tea Party Brew
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Bill Londrigan: While some observers have attempted to portray the Tea Party as a populist uprising against the prevailing powers, traditional populist movements support workers’ right to organize. Questions about where the Tea Party stands on workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits have now been put to rest – and they are far from any notion of populism!
The Tea Party — Again
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Steve Hockstadt: Rand Paul discovered that most of his fellow Republicans disagreed with his idea that a significant part of the civil rights triumph of the 1960s was wrong. That led him and the Republican Party into a whole new strategy of pretending that past statements don’t exist and only allowing these very conservative candidates to appear in front of friendly media hosts, who will not ask about them.
Texas GOP Is a Grand Old Piece of Work
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David Love: On the issue of family values, whatever that means, the Republican’s policy paper condemns homosexuality and opposes the legalization of sodomy and supports a prohibition on all pornography and strip clubs. Further, they would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, or for a civil official to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony.
Alvin Greene’s South Carolina Win: The Inside Scoop
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Michael Sigman: Roughly a third of Al’s votes came from soul and pop music lovers who believed they were voting for sexy Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Al Green, nee Albert Greene. Green, who was a superstar who sold millions of records in the ’70s, also evoked sympathy from voters who remembered he was once doused by his girlfriend in a sea of boiling grits.
Eight Thoughts About Election Day and Words and Music
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Michael Sigman: The name Tea Party evokes — was no doubt conjured to evoke — deep deep associations with The Boston Tea Party, a stirring public challenge to corporate monopoly and monarchy studied by every American schoolchild. Now, thrown together with carefully-chosen words and phrases like “Take our country back,” “socialism” and “Hitler,” the Tea Party purveys the exact opposite — restoring corporate monopolies and viciously rejecting a popularly-elected president.
The Teabag Platform – Clear Even in L.A.
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Tom Hall: In the same week that 48 states agreed to a proposal to have national education standards, Chuck Wilkerson said that we should be busting teachers’ unions, slashing teacher salaries and turning education over to private enterprise, to make a profit. 48 States. That’s every state except Alaska and Texas, even the most “red” states want some minimum standards. But the Teabag position is that public education is bad and should be ended.
Is America’s Second “Redemption Period” Coming To Fruition?
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Anthony Samad: With a conservative court, you never know…we just may be witnessing something we never expected to see. Neither did those living during Reconstruction. Somebody is waiting to “redeem” America a second time. It may be the national debate of the 2012 or 2016 Presidential elections. We just need to know what that really means, in terms of the return to yesterday in America. It’s not impossible…
Bald Pols: To Pay or Not Toupee
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Michael Sigman: It’s tough to be a politician and a member of what Larry David calls “the bald community” in America, particularly when your shoulders also carry the burden of taking our country back. On last week’s Real Time with Bill Maher, one of the host’s New Rules was, “If Rand Paul is a true libertarian, he has to free his toupee.”
Are the People Really Seizing Power?
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Tim Gatto: Everyone who calls themselves liberal, progressive, socialist or populist should pitch in and get the corporate lackeys out of Washington and give the government back to the people who really own it. This is just a beginning. We can’t sit on our laurels and let others keep the momentum going.
Rand Paul Could Use a Lesson from My Father on Discrimination
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Lawrence Wittner: In one way, Rand Paul is quite right. Anti-discrimination laws do turn the tables on businessmen, who find that they can no longer mistreat employees and customers on the basis of race, religion, national origins, or gender. And isn’t that ban on discriminatory behavior a good idea?
Rand Paul’s Retro America
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Tom Degan: Coming out as he did against the one of the main purposes of the Civil Rights Act was not a stupid gaffe on the part of Rand Paul – it was a decided political calculation. He wants and needs the racist vote, and he has every intention of getting it. Are there enough bigots in that state to put him over the top? Being an ancestor of Kentucky, I sure as hell hope not.
A Day to Honor All Who Fight to Protect Our Nation
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Tom Hall: This Memorial Day, the head of the Republican Party has called the 13th Amendment a perversion of our Constitution. The Republican members of the Texas School Book Commission have voted to teach that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was the real hero of the Civil War, and that those Union soldiers died in vain. In Tennessee and here in California, Tea Party candidates are campaigning on a platform plank that the 14th Amendment should not apply to brown children whose parents are immigrants.
Gulf Oil Spill: The Importance of Presidential Indignation and Explanation
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Robert Reich: Respectful disagreement is virtuous in a democratic society, but so is appropriate indignation. Indignation signals to the public that social responsibilities have been breached, and thereby lends credence and authority to all those who are working toward them. Franklin D. Roosevelt had no hesitancy blaming the “economic royalists” – the rich bankers and executives who stood in the way of the New Deal.
Invisible Hands, Invisible Liberty
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Mark Bowen: Kentucky does appear to be a state red enough that Rand Paul, no matter how many times he slips up and tells his constituents how he really feels, is still likely to be their next Senator. But in many ways Republicans will be hurt more nationally if he is, making it a minimum of six more years, rather than six more months, that he’ll be their problem.
Jim Crow in a Teabag
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David Love: From their early days at the McCain-Palin rallies during the 2008 presidential campaign, the Tea Party crowd has had an energy about them that smells of a Jim Crow type of racial intolerance, just like the 1950s and 1960s. Rand Paul’s prominence only confirms what many already knew, which is that racism under girds the Teabag movement.
What Do Teabaggers Stand For?
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Tom Hall: Even as the extreme right wing of the Republican Party has gained control, it’s hard to know exactly what they want from the system. They call themselves fiscal conservatives and libertarians but they were horrified by Bill Clinton’s balanced budget.
How Democrats Are Saving the Party from Itself
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Paul Hogarth: Democrats are not supposed to run primary candidates against incumbents because it is “divisive” – but it was time to hold Senators like Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln (who killed the public option) accountable. 2006 and 2008 were the years that voters picked “change,” and both Senators are the reason such change failed to get traction. Joe Sestak and Bill Halter faced huge odds taking on a Senator in their own Party who had the President’s support, but what they had was disenchanted Obama activists who wanted to see change happen.
TeaBag T-shirts, the Summer Job Connection
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Tom Hall: Republican activist Dick Armey claims that he built the Teabag movement to energize Republican right wing activists. Is there an army of Teabaggers eager to wear T-shirts proclaiming “I’m a soldier in Dick Armey’s army of dicks!”
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