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Republican “Tsunami” begins by washing away reality

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RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is boasting that the 2014 midterm election will be a “tsunami”, a mere “wave” not being big enough to show all the awesomeness of the predicted GOP WIN this fall.

Maybe “tsunami” is the new Etch-a-Sketch because it clearly has Reinced away the reality of the 2012 presidential election for the Republicans:

Forget the final results. Priebus told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that voters thought Mitt Romney had the better presidential chops.

“I mean, the fact of the matter is Mitt Romney won on the message,” Priebus said. “He won on jobs, he won on the economy, he won on the question of, ‘Who do you actually think would make a better president?’ But where he lost was on the question of, ‘Who cares about you?'”.[…]

But it’s unclear from the exit polling what led Priebus to believe that Romney “won on jobs” and even more inexplicable why the chairman believes that voters said Romney “would make a better president.”

Speaking of “who cares about you?”, something that they may have trouble tsunami-ing away this fall, here is Speaker John Boehner showing his empathy gap: Boehner Rejects Senate Deal To Revive Jobless Benefits

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Wednesday came out against a bipartisan Senate deal to revive emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed, a sign that the Republican-led House intends to nix the proposal.

Boehner didn’t offer a counter-proposal on jobless benefits. “Frankly,” he said, “a better use of the Senate’s time would be taking up and passing the dozens of House-passed jobs bills still awaiting action.“

What’s this? The Republican House of Representatives passed some jobs bills??? Oh that’s right: each of the 51 “repeal Obamacare” votes was in order to save GOP freshmen’s jobs, guys who need to burnish their tea party credentials.

More …

A little birdie told me …

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More from the morning news …

Search For Missing Jet Focuses On Objects Seen Off Australia

Satellite images showing objects floating in the Indian Ocean have focused the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and the 239 people who were on board to an area about 1,500 miles southwest of Perth, Australia.

This is, in the words of acting Malaysian transport minister Hishammuddin Hussien, the first “credible lead” since the plane disappeared on March 8 while on what was supposed to be a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

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Buddhist Student Wins Settlement With Louisiana School District That Called His Religion ‘Stupid’

A Buddhist student and his family won a settlement last week against a Louisiana school district where the student’s religion was ridiculed in class as “stupid,” the teacher taught that evolution is “impossible,” and that the bible is “100 percent true.”

The court-approved consent decree prohibits future religious discrimination in a school district that had portraits of Jesus Christ in the halls and a “lighted, electronic marquee” outside one school that scrolls Bible verses. “Religious liberty, as embodied by the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and free speech are hallowed constitutional rights to which all are entitled,” the consent decree states.

Parents Scott and Sharon Lane alleged in their lawsuit that their attempts to report religious harassment were dismissed with comments that “this is the Bible Belt,” and that their son, referred to as “C.C.,” could either change his faith or transfer to another school where “there were more Asians.”

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Wisconsin Republican Legislator Tears Into His Own Party For Voter Suppression

As his own party pushed through the Wisconsin Senate the latest in a series of measures to make it harder to vote in the state, Sen. Dale Schultz (R) blasted the efforts as “trying to suppress the vote” last week. […]

Schultz argued that this and dozens of similar bills before the Senate this were based on “mythology” that voter fraud is a serious concern: “I began this session thinking that there was some lack of faith in our voting process and we maybe needed to address it. But I have come to the conclusion that this is far less noble.”

Noting that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower championed the 1957 civil rights law, Schultz said that he could not “find any real reason” for his party’s effort to make it harder to vote:

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Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 12 Comments

12 comments

  3. JanF

    Carville: Throw the lead pass into November

    The fundamental consideration is this: if the election were held in the current climate, it wouldn’t be hard to argue that the Democrats might have a bad, perhaps even awful, election ahead of them. However, the one thing we know is that it is not going to be held now – it is going to be held in November. This is a case where we don’t know if there is going to be a political climate change or not. Suffice to say, I am pulling for some political climate change.

    In the March 7-10 edition of Bloomberg’s poll, 64 percent of Americans support the law outright or support changes to it. That is up from 60 percent in Bloomberg’s December poll. Well, in that same poll, 72 percent said the healthcare law will affect their voting decision. If we continue on this trajectory the climate might be more favorable.

    It’s the same thing with the economy: look at the December, January and February jobs numbers. We have had some pickup, although it’s been slower than most would like. Will it continue? I am not sure, but it is not unreasonable to assume economic conditions will be better in November.

    The point is that we don’t need dramatic changes to have a real impact. What we do need is better-than-average changes in optimism of the economic outlook and continued improvements in support of the Affordable Care Act. […]

    Democratic strategists and operatives should not design a strategy based off today’s conditions. They should be setting a strategy for where the trajectory of polling is headed. You have to lead your teammate.

  4. JanF

    Federal Patent Office Rejects ‘Washington Redskin Potatoes’ Trademark Due To ‘Derogatory’ Term

    An examining attorney for the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected an application to trademark “Washington Redskin Potatoes,” in part because the name could be seen as derogatory to Native Americans. That’s a decision that could foreshadow trouble for the Washington Redskins football team, as the Patent and Trademark Office is currently considering a case challenging the trademark protection granted to the team’s controversial name.

    There is a trademark case pending over the Redskins name and as with most things, “doing the right thing” will be much easier if the loss of revenue hurts the NFL (billionaire Snyder doesn’t care):

    Invalidating the trademark protection is the most likely way the name will change. Without the trademark, anyone who wanted to sell merchandise related to the team could use the name, and though Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has said he would not change the name even if he loses the case, attorneys for the NFL and team argued in a previous case that losing it would cause “every imaginable loss you can think of.” Because the NFL splits merchandising revenue evenly among its 32 teams, that would cause losses throughout the league, and it’s hard to see NFL owners standing for that simply to let Snyder keep the name.

  5. JanF

    From the White House: President Obama Awards the Medal of Honor to 24 Army Veterans

    [Tuesday] afternoon, President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to 24 Army veterans in recognition of their valor during major combat operations in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

    Each veteran honored today had already received the Distinguished Service Cross – the nation’s second-highest military award – but 19 of them were previously overlooked for the Medal of Honor due to their racial or ethnic backgrounds. Today’s ceremony follows a 12-year Pentagon review, ordered by Congress, of past discrimination in the military.

    “No nation is perfect,” the President said at today’s ceremony. “But here in America, we confront our imperfections and face a sometimes painful past, including the truth that some of these soldiers fought and died for a country that did not always see them as equal.”

  6. JanF

    Koch Group Yet Again Fails Fact Check On Obamacare Horror Story

    The Koch-funded conservative activist group is spending millions of dollars on TV ads aimed at undermining the Affordable Care Act and unseating Democratic senators who voted for it in their 2014 reelection fights.

    But the ads keep falling flat upon examination of their claims. […]

    In response, AFP shifted course and decided to strike an emotional chord against Obamacare without claiming people were worse off as a result of it. That tactic was employed in its latest ad, which features a woman speaking to the camera.

    “People don’t like political ads. I don’t like them either. But health care isn’t about politics,” the woman says. “It’s about people. And millions of people have lost their health insurance, millions of people can’t see their own doctors, and millions are paying more and getting less.”

    Not so fast there, woman talking in vague generalizations citing “millions of people”!! For some reason, the mainstream media has decided that fact checking Koch ads is worth their time, possibly because it is so easy to do. The Washington Post cites actual data from Kaiser Family Foundation and found this:

    “At worst, they’re paying more to get more, though in many cases they’re actually paying less,” PolitiFact concluded. “We rate this claim False.”

  7. JanF

    They took a big chunk out of blood-red Waukesha County to attach to his district because his constituents are from cities hard hit by the recession and harmed by Republican congressional policies that won’t address unemployment or a living wage.

    From Racine, “Wisc. Resident Confronts Paul Ryan Over Inner City Poverty Comments”

    After some said Ryan’s remarks were racially charged, the congressman explained his statement was “inarticulate.” Alfonso Gardner, from Mount Pleasant, Wisc. called Ryan out on this explanation at a town hall in Racine.

    “The next day you said that statement was inarticulate. Well, I don’t believe that. You said what you meant,” Gardner said to Ryan about his remarks.

    Ryan pulled the “you don’t know what’s in my heart” card:

    “This is not a race thing. It’s just a poor thing. Poverty knows no racial boundaries. That’s the issue I’m trying to get at, which is we have to rethink our war on poverty and our programs so that it always pays to work. Because we have these incentives to people not to work,” Ryan responded. “I get it. You don’t know me, so you don’t know who I really am. Race has nothing to do with this.”

    Nope, we know exactly who you are, Rep. Ryan. And so do the voters in your district.

    Gardner was interviewed later by ThinkProgress and added this:

    ThinkProgress spoke with Gardner after the town hall to get his reaction. He said Ryan’s trying to have it both ways, saying different things to different people. “He’s out here shucking and jiving,” Gardner said. “He’s been in Congress eight terms and just now talking about poverty?”

  9. bubbanomics

    Romney won on the economy 49/48 and the deficit 49/47 in the linked exit polling. What else is the guy gonna say?  He’s the mouthpiece of the GOP.

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