December 5, 2011 -- It was a quiet week here in Washington Woebegone, or so it seemed to me. The legislators, back from doing whatever they do when not in session. Raising money? Of course, but they have to do that even when they are in session. And we had five whole days without a Republican debate. Almost a whole week. Did the grass seem greener, the air fresher, the days brighter? Then came Saturday, Mike Huckabee, Fox News, and the troopers, though a slightly shorter list now that Cain has suspended his campaign and Jon Huntsman did not accept an invitation.
Earlier in the week James Moore summed up the candidates as follows: “As one more woman makes up another story about Herman Cain’s sexual proclivities, Rick Perry struggles to understand who is eligible to vote in the democracy he wants to lead. Mitt Romney changes positions as often as a light-hitting utility infielder; Michelle Bachman prompts questions about what is required to become a member of the House Intelligence Committee; Ron Paul makes enough sense to scare the electorate; Newt Gingrich has reached the fifth level of hypocrisy and thinks his contradictions are invisible or meaningless, while Jon Huntsman, who has been far too rational and informed to be riding in the GOP clown car, stands off to the side and wonders how he is not even qualified to be considered for the Iowa debate on December 10.” We might consider this our play list as we go down the campaign debate trail.
At least the Saturday night campaign spectacle took a different form, as a forum, set up by former governor and presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee and Fox News with three conservative state attorneys generals who have filed legal cases against the 2009 health care law firing tough questions at the candidates. The candidates were challenged to prove they are really conservatives, the more so the better. Under this three on one format there was no opportunity for intraparty politics. The New York Times called it “one of the more substantive television events in the Republican contest so far.” They convinced me. These people are certainly all truly conservatives, as mean spirited as necessary to qualify. I feel them nipping at my shins just by thinking about it.
If it has appeared to you that these debates have taken on the character of a traveling reality show, wait until December 27 when one will be moderated by Donald Trump, sponsored by Newsmax, the conservative magazine and Web site. Will the participants have to produce their valid birth certificates? Will Trump have the power to fire somebody? Should be different at least.
“Newt Gingrich’s mind is in love with itself.”
“It has persuaded itself that it is brilliant when it is merely promiscuous. He plays air guitar with ideas, producing air ideas. He ejaculates concepts, notions and theories that are as inconsistent as his behavior.” As Gingrich reaches the top of the polls along with Romney, propelled no doubt to a large degree by the Herman Cain Titanic voyage, he is garnering the attention of all of the usual suspects, er commentators. This passage is from a Maureen Dowd column in Sunday’s New York Times in which she does a thorough number on the eccentric self-appointed visionary. The entire column would be worth reprinting.
David Brooks wrote: “Sometime between now and Iowa Newt’s essential Newtness will emerge — mainly the fact that each successive moment for him has no bearing on the next.” And that’s just a conservative columnist writing.
In New York Magazine Dan Amira wrote about “Newt Gingrich's habit of using a few choice adverbs to make the things he says sound just a bit more intelligent to his listeners: Profoundly. Deeply. Frankly. But none of them are as vital to the Gingrich lexicon as fundamentally (along with its cousin, the adjective fundamental).” Dan made a list of 418 occasions when Gingrich used “Fundamental” in a speech or interview. Frankly, with profound feeling I deeply agree that Newt is fundamentally overdoing it.
“I’m used to being in the minority. I’m a left-handed, gay Jew.”
The Republican candidates were not the only personalities in the news this week. That thirty year fixture in the House of Representatives Barney Frank announced he will not run for reelection. Things are never quite the same when bedrock disappear, especially one that stood up against the weight of massive disapprobation, that often takes the form of downright hatred. To say he earned it is not to brush off his hard work, his diligence, his never-ending effort to do good for common cause. But he is a bully.
Early in his career it was thought that he had a shot at ultimately becoming Speaker of the House; in fact Speaker John McCormack is quoted as saying ‘Oh, Barney, I had hoped you would become the first Jewish Speaker’ when Frank told him he was coming out of the closet, or “out of the room” as McCormack mistakenly announced to staff. Well he did bound out of the closet and into his own sex scandal, which he managed to survive with strong support from his constituents.
Whether you approve or disapprove of his views without question he has the best grasp on matters financial of anyone in Congress. In The Daily Beast /Newsweek coverage of his announcement the point was made that even the Wall Street financiers who fought against his efforts to regulate them often sought his counsel. He had not won a Nobel Prize as did Paul Krugman, but Krugman wrote that no one else could explain complicated financial matters as clearly as Frank.
His foes, you have to call them foes rather than opponents due to the viciousness of the attacks he took, have attempted to lay blame for the housing bubble at his feet, even tough he was in the minority with no power to act during its development by the very people who created it. By chance I tuned in a televised committee meeting during that period and watched him warn the members that too many people were buying houses they could not afford only to take criticism for trying to prevent people from realizing the American dream of home ownership by the Republican majority leader.
In his announcement he said he had planned to run for one more term but when the results of redistricting came out he saw he would be faced with losing a large segment of his long-time supporters and introducing himself convincingly to a very large number of new constituents. To do so and win would consume all of his time preventing him from diligently doing his job in Congress. As it stands these days to win and hold a seat takes so much time and money it interferes with the job of governing. Rick Perry wants a part-time Congress like the Texas legislature. Well, in effect, we already have one.
At least for the next year he will be able to keep his focus on legislation. Maybe he can even save the Dodd-Frank bill from the masticating jaws of carnivorous Republicans out to kill it.
I wouldn’t call Frank a lovable figure, but I for one will miss his frankness (no pun intended), forthright bluntness and unceasing efforts to attach a curb bit on the rampaging financial system. He was the guy with his finger in the dike so look out now.
There is, of course, that little matter of his personality. Karl Rove wrote “Brilliant, but acid tongued and generally unpleasant, Mr. Frank ruled with an iron gavel, ran over critics with delight and treated committee members and especially Republican colleagues as lesser forms of life.” It takes one to know one.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who has covered him for years, writes that he is mean to his staff, mean to his colleagues, even once made a young woman trying to make him up for a TV appearance cry. Frank was frequently good for a quote. “Conservatives believe that, from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.” And: “The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.”
As Milbank notes, “Barney Frank, liberal lion, gay pioneer and respected legislator, is also one mean and ornery S.O.B.” Yet, I will be sorry to see him gone. He will have no replacement.
“Your list is just not accurate so, one, we’re going to have to be better informed.”
We can’t leave Mitt Romney out of any account of the week’s adventures of political figures. This was a little rebuke he gave to Bret Baier of Fox News during an interview when Baier asked him: “How can voters trust what they hear from you today is what you will believe if you win the White House?” An uptight Romney complained about the tone of it after it was over. I think we have to say he is thinned skinned and not very likeable, not that he isn’t a decent human being, but he is the epitome of that 0.01 percenter so much on our minds these days. As NYT columnist Gail Collins puts it: “Romney made his living buying companies on borrowed money, shrinking the work force, and then walking away with so much profit that the companies were, on occasion, left like victims of an overeager vampire.” All very smart. All very legal. But how does that translate into being the chief in charge of the welfare of over 300 million living, breathing human beings?
“Let’s face it, Shank is not a pretty word.”
Bob File, a former pig farmer and the president of Pioneer Meat, commenting on the power of euphemisms. In marketing a new popular food item, a two-ounce bits of pork cut from the fibula of a ham shank the common name for it is “Pig Wings.” There are variations, such as squealers, beaver tails. carnitas-on-sticks or carnitas lollipops. It’s like Chinese Gooseberries did not sell well in American markets until the name was changed to Kiwi.
This comes to mind as we learn of instructions given to members of the Republican Governors gathering in Florida on the importance of the choice of words, by the Party’s message mastermind Frank Luntz.
● Replace “capitalism” with ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market.
● Change “taxes the rich” to “takes from the rich.”
● No ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.
● G.O.P. euphemisms for the wealthy can be “small businesses” but the main one is “job creators” as in punishing job creators.
If there is anything that gets my hackles up, or makes my skin crawl like scratching a blackboard with your fingernails it is the use of “job creators.” People hire people to fill jobs, but they don’t “create” them. Market demand creates jobs. Here is the best explanation by a successful entrepreneur and true member of the 1 Percent, Nick Hanauer.
“I’ve never been a ‘job creator.’ I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.”
“Only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.” This is the truth of the matter and I am fed up with conservatives whining about so-called “job creators.” Enough already.
“These days, ambulance-chaser economists like yours truly have an embarrassment of riches.”
So much is going wrong, in so many places, that one hardly knows where to start.” Some words from Paul Krugman, the evil economist from the left if you follow the conservative line. Britain is the poster boy for the theory of “promising to slash deficits and energize economic growth through radical fiscal austerity. It failed dismally” as an editorial in the New York Times points out. That is not a partisan view. It is obvious to all. The cuts reduced growth so badly more cuts had to be made with reduced growth yet more so more cuts set. And the British are still at it.
The scary part of this is that this seems to be the model for Republican policy. Just cut everything to the bone no matter how it affects 99 percent of the population and wait for “job creators” to get creative. Oh woe. Oh bane. Birnamwood shall march to Dunsinane.
“I'm at peace with my God. I'm at peace with my wife, and she is at peace with me.”
If you say so, Herman Cain, if you say so. After suspending your campaign. Like so many others, I’ve wondered how Cain could enter such a high-profile race having such a history. Did he really think no one would come ignore it? Who did he think he is, another J.F.K.? The Daily Beast laid it on the testosterone factor. Makes you wonder if originally he just thought by running he would gain so much attention it would sell more books, increase his fees for making speeches. And that may still be true. Meanwhile, he is also the butt of many jokes. For example, this one reported by Columnist David Brooks: “I did see a nice tweet from somebody who observed that the only thing Herman Cain knows about foreign affairs is that he denies having had any.”
Meanwhile the Cain people launched a new Web page, Women for Cain. Do they expect women to respond to his charms as usual? Could be they are using it to collect money to pay off campaign expenses (Cain is accustomed to pay offs).
You have to feel a little empathy for a man brought down so low after reaching such heights, even though it was all his doing. In that spirit I offer him these few words of consolation.
Herman, we’re feeling your pain
Let us turn to the tale
Of the woe and travail
Of the man in the news Herman Cain
It seems he forgot a
Past inamorata
Oh Herman we’re feeling your pain
You’re neither Spitzer nor Arnold
When it comes to things carnal
Yet your actions are hard to explain
Thirteen years she collects,
Money and gifts, but no sex?
Oh Herman, we’re felling your pain.
What now? There’s some hope
If like Gingrich, go “Pope”
And a Catholic confession obtain.
Still with such an exemption
The road’s long to redemption
Oh Herman we’re feeling your pain.
A Bachmann hysterectomy
A bad Perry vasectomy
Or if Santorum failed to abstain
Might divert bad publicity
Of all your lubricity
But look for unlikely miracles in vain.
If still wishing to contend,
Then just face it my friend
Take the one course that’s simple and plain.
Claim the media, the press
Is at blame for this mess
And certainly not you, Herman Cain.
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