Republicans support torture, nix any aid to the poor

Kevin Drum refers to Joe Klein's article which describes the reaction of the Republican base to the debate Wednesday night. Kevin's take is "the only thing these GOP voters hated more than helping the poor was being told that it's wrong to torture people."

Why am I not surprised?

Christian Right will not abandon the Republicans - just sink them in 2008

The Christian Right is extremely unhappy with the current range of Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination. They are talking about breaking away and starting a third party for 2008.

It's all talk. Digby explains. The Christian Right has no hope that the Republicans will with the Presidency in 2008. What they are doing is flexing their muscle within the Republican Party. They will do to Romney or Giuliani what they did to Bob Dole in 1996 - they will hang an extreme social right-wing platform on whoever the candidate is, and watch him go down to destruction.

They don't want the Presidency in 2008 anyway. The recession is coming, and whoever gets the election will also have to clean up the Iraq mess. Both are going to make it very unlikely that whoever gets the Presidency in 2008 will be extremely vulnerable in 2012.

So the Christian Right is also setting up a process that will give them a Christian social Republican candidate in 2012, one totally beholden to the social Republicans. They are also going to spend the four years from 2009 to November 2012 attacking the Democrat for their actions taken to clean up the economic and military mess made by the Bush administration.

The social Republicans can't run a third party candidate because such a candidate cannot win, while running a third party will lose them power within the Republican Party. They cannot leave the Republican Party, since they have no chance of influencing Democrats. The only vehicle the social conservatives have for continued power at the national level is to retain power within the Republican Party. At the same time, the Republican Party without the social conservatives will be reduced to permanent minority status. What the social conservatives have to do for long-term national political survival is to (grudgingly) remain in the Republican Party, tank the Republican candidate in 2008 and nominate one of their own for 2012.

That's what all the talk of the Christians running a third party candidate of their own is all about. They are trying for a replay of 1996 - 2000.

S-CHIP and Republican lack of character

Paul Krugman today explains why the case of the New Jersey Graeme Frost family exactly demonstrates the severe need for an expanded S-CHIP program for families of working people who cannot afford or (as is the case for the Frost family) cannot find an insurance company who will provide health insurance at any price.

The example of the Frost family is, in fact, so very powerful that the Republicans cannot refute the way it demonstrates the critical need to pass S-CHIP. Since they cannot refute the example, they are in the process of sliming the 12-year-old Graeme Frost. So again, the Republicans demonstrated their 'values.' And what are those 'values?'

Here is the kind of value the Republicans are demonstrating: If you can't pay for needed health care, you have no value. That includes your children. And you damned sure don't want to disagree with your betters, the wealthy Republicans. If you do, you will get publicly attacked by the most powerful politicians in the Republican Party.

The attack dogs are not unknown bloggers. Michele Malkin, the lead dog, runs the most visited conservative blog on the Internet. Rush Limbaugh has often met with Vice President Cheney and frequently interviews all the leading Republican politicians. The talking points being used to slime 12 year-old Graeme Frost came from a staffer in the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). There is no doubt that the attack on Graeme Frost is Republican Party policy!

The Republican Party consists of people who will attack a 12 year-old disabled boy to keep their power, and the Republican base who supports them. They are once again demonstrating that the Republican leaders do not have the character, conscience or values required of leaders in America. Their followers do not have the needed judgment to vote for good men or women.

Tom Tomorrow, together with Digby, demonstrate what the 'values' practiced by Republicans really are.

It is time to remove the Republicans from power at all levels.

Novak - Republicans knew about and concealed Larry Craig's behavior

According to Bloomberg, (see Think Progress for the TV clip.) Bob Novak has stated that the Senate Republicans have known that Larry Craig is gay and that he has long practiced his toilet-stall behavior.

It amazes me how blatantly those Republicans hide and support their closeted gay politicians and still run on an anti-gay platform to satisfy their social conservative base. The level of hypocrisy demonstrated by the leaders of the social conservative so-called 'values voters' is the flip side of the same coin.

It probably shouldn't surprise me, though. Those politicians and social conservative leaders are themselves particularly nasty pieces of work. Our society no longer reacts viscerally in fear of an uprising of Blacks, so they have had to find new enemies to pretend were existential threats to America so that they could hang onto power. What have they found? Gays, Muslims, and immigrants. Oh, and they have never stopped being afraid of poor and sick people.

If there really were an interventionist God performing miracles, every time they called themselves 'Christians' their tongues would burst into fire.

Republicans can't be honest and get voters to donate to them.

If you are a Republican and are having difficulty getting donations, what do you do? There are a lot of answers, but one that is characteristic of the Republican Party is that you lie to elderly people and try to frighten them into sending the Republicans money. Here is a report from Paul Keil at TPMMuckraker:

What 83 year-old William Sidwell of Queen City, Missouri found in his mailbox last week scared him. It was a letter from the Republican National Committee, but it seemed to bear grave news: "Our records show that you registered as a member of our Party in Schuyler County, MO," the letter said. "But a recent audit of your Party affiliation turned up some irregularities."

Audit? Irregularities? Was he in trouble? Were they threatening him? Sidwell went immediately to his ask his son, Dennis, a licensed public accountant, for advice. You can see the letter, and the accompanying "Voter Registration Verification and Audit Form," right here. Particularly puzzling to the both of them, Dennis told me, is that his father is a life-long Democrat.

[Go read the TPMMuckraker article to see an image of the letter.]

The letter, it turns out, is just a misleading pitch for a contribution to the RNC -- one of the "irregularities" cited in the letter is that "I cannot find a record of you taking a single action in support of the Republican Party -- not locally, not nationally!" A contribution, the letter suggests, would help set the record straight.

If this were a letter that frightened an elderly person into donating money to a religious organization it would legally be fraud. Legal or not, it is totally unethical.

Unethical as it is, it is also representative of the way the Republican Party of today operates.

Bipartisanship - the new Republican meme to protect them from their failures

Anyone else notice that the media suddenly started demanding that the Democrats act in a bipartisan manner right after the Republicans lost big in the midterm elections?

I have found the idea utterly insulting. The Republicans have ruled this government on the basis of 50% plus one vote since before Bush as appointed to office. When they controlled both houses of Congress they didn't even invite Democrats to the committee meetings to reconcile legislation between the House and the Senate. "Bipartisanship" was a bad word in Tom Delay's House of Representatives. The Republicans took control of the Texas House in 2004 and rammed redistricting through without any hint of bipartisanship.

But now that the Republicans are out of control of Congress, suddenly bipartisanship has become the All-American virtue, and the absence of it has become somehow a failure of the Democrats!

Sorry. I don't want compromise with Fascists, Communists, or Republicans. They have all proven that they are out to screw me and America over, and they should all get their punishment - like Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Jack Abramoff have. Bipartisanship with untrustworthy people who are out to get you is a very bad idea!

Digby reminded me of what a really, really bad idea bipartisanship is. So does watching Joe Lieberman play footsie with the gutter slime Republicans.

The "Bipartisanship" meme is just another effort by the Republicans to avoid losing power after the voters have rejected them and everything they stand for.

Bush strategy: Deliver fancy rhetoric, no facts and ignore critics

Don't listen to a Bush press conference for facts and reality. All you are going to get is the latest "focus-group tested" catch phrase and a bunch of irrelevant bullshit surrounding raw statements that translate into "I have decided on War. We will have war as long as I am in office." Usually this latter will be delivered in a whiny voice that says "Why don't you idiots out there understand what I see so clearly?"

Of course, what we almost almost all now understand now is that the "special clothes" he claims he is wearing don't exist. It is Bush who doesn't understand, and exposes his stupidity at every over-scripted press conference.

The political differences in bush's audience are not between those who understand how naked Bush is and those who are afraid to say they don't see his "clothes" for fear that everyone will recognize how stupid they are. As Steve Clemons points out, there are still 'true believers' among the right-wing, but they are being manipulated by the leaders like Bill Krystol. They are the targets of those "focus-group tested" catch phrases. But these are right-wing sheep wearing approved right-wing blinders.

The really important difference is between those who see the severe costs that America is paying for Bush's idiocy, and those right-wing leaders who will personally lose power and money when someone finally gets rid of Bush. That is why Bill Krystol is so proud of planting a new catch-phrase into Bush's Press Conference, and why he recently published the utterly reality-free pollyannaish article "Why bush will be a winner."

So bush, because of his mental illness, refuses to actually think about what government is doing. Instead he depends on his gut feel and his famous "Intuition." Then he turns the actually job of getting things done over to a few trusted subordinates - who are trusted largely because they don't ever disagree with Bush. Since Bush does not know how his subordinates operate, he cannot hold them accountable. Besides, he trusts them because of his intuition.

Those subordinates and their friends outside the government then manipulate Bush's decisions so that he thinks that he is making them. They keep critics away from Bush or discredit them to him, and they hand him the focus-grouped catch-phrases to manipulate the right-wing followers.

The result is a government that does not and cannot work, a lot of wealthy lobbyists and contractors getting paid for government contracts that they generally are not competent to perform, and a refusal to even question the continuance of the purposeless war in Iraq.

For the reason why the war cannot be ended, see The Iraq War IS the Republican Party. The term "Purposeless" refers to the American need for the War in Iraq. The Republican Party badly needs that war to continue.

As long as Bush remains President and the Republicans remain able to filibuster all significant legislation in the Senate, this will not change.