“Morning Joe” Scarborough went on a rant over Michele Bachmann on Friday morning. The panel, which included guest Michael Steele were discussing the debate. Finally Joe just let it all hang out and unleashed an angry monologue which was quoted in Huffingtonpost.com:
“Michele Bachmann’s first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted. Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost–some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way…they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines…Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke…Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”
“Tell us how you really feel,” panelist Michael Steele joked.
Scarborough went on to explain his rage:
Bachmann, he said, was symbolic of a kind of “conspiracy” that always happens in the early stages of presidential elections, where the base of the party pushes “somebody that is never going to win.” This, he said, allows the media to “run articles on these people on the far right and point for a year about ‘look how whacked out the Republican party is.'”
Scarborough said that the same thing happens every four years in Iowa, and pointed to Mike Huckabee’s surge in 2007 as evidence of this.
Scarborough left off a few people. Bachmann isn’t the only one who really doesn’t seem particularly mainstream. She is in good company.
Is there really only one Republican candidate? Does someone as out of the mainstream as Bachmann really stand a chance to be elected? People who like Bachmann like her because she represents their value system. I get that. But how many people’s value system agree there? 50% of American voters? I think not.
Each party usually sends up sending a moderate from each party out for the final leg of the race. The the other party spends all its time pointing out how the opposition is really extreme. Unless a candidate appeals to the independent middle, that candidate won’t be elected. That’s the reality of an election.
Republicans continue to shoot themselves in the foot by kicking and screaming over their own candidate. Democrats didn’t beat McCain, Republicans did. I can’t tell you how often I heard McCain called a RINO. Well…that kind of name calling isn’t going to elect a Republican.
Far Right Republicans need to either figure out how to convince over 50% of the voters to vote far right or they are going to have to follow what historically has been the tradition to elect an moderate as the party candidate. Then they are going to have to get behind that candidate. Its time for the freak shows to stop.
You couldn’t have gotten much further out of the so-called mainstream than Obama in 2008. All those Democratic primary candidates with much larger resumes and established records didn’t stand a chance. Kettle and pot here. You can criticize all you want the rationale behind early support for this or that Republican candidate; but you cannot deny that the Obama nomination was based on enthusiasm without background knowledge and on reaction to the Bush administration and not on equal comparisons of the qualifications and capabilities of all the candidates who presented themselves for party scrutiny. The Democratics and Independents lined up behind a knight on a white horse without even knowing much about him except that he made thrills tingle up and down their legs with a glib tongue and was gifted at expressing their hatred of Bush.
Obama was groomed for the job since before 2004 when he was paraded out at the Democratic Convention.
You are viewing this issue through Republican eyes, not Independent or Democratic eyes. To assume not much was known about him is a false assumption.
The thrills going up and down legs is a fairly offensive thing to say. How about me making some crack about Palin and boners? Those 2 comments would be about on par with each other. I doubt that most people like to have someone say that all their political thoughts are based on cheap thrills.
You are assuming that all Democrats and Independents have turned on Obama. Some have, but the vast majority have not. Telling us we have does not make it so.
I didn’t hate Bush either. I also didn’t see Obama as the great white hope. When you look at when he took office and what had just happened in our country financially, he really hasn’t done that poor of a job.
Now honestly, could McCain have done better? Probably no better, no worse. McCain’s problem was a running mate issues. Had he chosen a different running mate, he might be the one taking all the heat now. A McCain/Ridge ticket would have been a shoe in. Ridge is well-respected by many Independents.
Anyone see what’s funny about the first part? As to thrills going up legs being offensive, take it up with Chris Matthews, he said it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJtaMsGgtvE&feature=related
Kinda like the reaction of the Repub candidates to Obama’s admin. I heard a lot of that during the last debate – the candidates were short on original ideas (not soundbites but actual plans) but quick to blame Obama.
M-h, you’re right. Had McCain chosen a worthy running mate, he might be the one taking the heat for the economy and jobs right now. Independents might have overlooked his age had he chosen a qualified candidate as VP.
Again, there is nothing quite so funny as reading the far left’s assessment of conservative politics. Like listening to me opine on sports topics.
Actually, better yet, it would be like listening to me give my perspective on being a black man in America.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
Chris Matthews said it about himself, not anyone else.
When it is applied to everyone, it is offensive.
Ah pokie, you see me as far left? If *I* am far left, you are way over there is reactionary land. Too funny. Actually, it isn’t really funny. I find it alarming that you are so far right that you would think I was far left. Its going to be heartbreaking when you discover that about 30% of the voting population is far left of me. You aren’t going to like it.
The lefties won’t take me.
@Wolverine,
The Democrats certainly did know what they were getting. Did you not see the 2004 Convention? Now are all Democrats speaking with one voice? Of course not. But Obama was not a surprise. Everyone saw it coming. You don’t trot out the young, unheard of except to prime the pump for the next election. Bill Clinton made his debut that way also, in 88 I believe. The R’s thought he was an unknown in 92. Not really. That same grooming had been going on for his presidential run.
I was/am a Hillary person. However, she isn’t the prez. That is something I had to deal with and get over real fast. The reality is, Hillary was just a little old take on a shining star in the D party. Another reality is that Hill’s popularity also comes in part through Bill. It is impossible to make a clear distinction.
@Moon-howler
Ah, the power of denial. It is truly awe-inspiring!
What is it I am denying?
back on topic – Joe is correct in his assessment.
Sad thing is that there are people that believe that a default by the US would not impact us, and the next generation.
Agreed, Pat, and thanks for reeling us back in. That is becoming a habit, to deflect to bad Obama any time the heat gets turned up a little, it seems.
I see the fingerpointing continues without ‘point’. Her comment that we should have defaulted reflects her political immaturity. The fast comeback or the short sound bite are no more an indicator of leadership than a lecture from President O.
The best leader I’ve seen lately is Boehner – the best one can be while being held hostage. Today’s NYT has a decent article on the economy. Before anyone jumps, read it. Comments are from experienced economists that have worked with various administrations – but focused on the good of the country. After reading it, I see that both ‘sides’ in DC and here make good points. Too bad no one here or there listens.
Warning: It is more than three lines long and contains multi syllable words.
Who helped you with it?
Knock it off! Juturna didn’t come here to be insulted by YOU.
@Juturna
You have a link?
I don’t get the NYT.
And if the Democrats knew what they were getting with Obama, more fools they. The press didn’t know anything about him (or now for that matter). I will give him this, he was honest about his goals. Its just that no one except conservatives were listening to him and taking him at his word.
We are not all fools. Once again, where were you in 2004?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/business/economy/voices-faulting-gop-economic-policies-growing-louder.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=G.O.P.%20on%20defensive&st=cse
What exactly do you call Jutuna’s last line? a benediction?
She didn’t personally insult you. She indicated it wasn’t a quick or easy read.
@Juturna
That IS a very good article. The Keynesian economists that all support tax increases see no downside to them, including, Mr. Feldstein, who was chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He advocated stimulus spending. Didn’t work. President admitted it. And he advocates increasing taxes “by limiting “tax expenditures,” the costly tax breaks for corporations and individuals that include the mortgage-interest deduction” but doesn’t see how that might drag down the housing market farther.
They decry “further” reductions ins spending, when if they were honest, would point out that there are NO cuts. The cuts are from the future baseline that INCREASES spending. And those “cuts”, at most, equal $100 billion per year.
They are upset at Republicans and Democrats for “setting aside widely accepted economic theory.” But that’s just it. They support Keynesian theory. And it doesn’t appear to be working. So we need to set it aside.
“An anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking,” he wrote. “Washington hassles over debt ceilings instead of job creation in the mistaken belief that a balanced budget will produce a balanced economy. It will not.”
Cutting our debt and deficits reduces our need for higher taxes. A reduction in taxes keeps more money in the hands of the citizenry. That results in higher economic activity.
A Democratic Congressional adviser, granted anonymity to discuss party deliberations, said: “We’re at a loss to figure out a way to articulate the argument in a way that doesn’t get us pegged as tax-and-spenders.”
That’s because THAT is what the Democrats are advocating. The Republicans, except for the Tea Party are advocating tax cuts and spending. The Democrats hope that increased taxes will cover the outgo while the Republicans hope that increased economic activity will cover the outgo. Neither, in this economy, will work. They need a growing economy for either to work.
Cutting spending is the only thing that will work. That’s why the candidates rejected that idiotic $10 in cuts / $1 in tax increases idea at the debate. The future cuts never, ever show up. Just ask President Reagan.
Sooo, yes. This was a great article illustrating the Keynesian argument for spending more and taxing more to increase economic activity.
Here’s as essay on Depression Economics. They do their best to keep it readable.
http://mises.org/daily/5513/Rethinking-Depression-Economics
Warning: It is more than three lines long and contains multi-syllable words and requires thinking.
@Juturna
I just read the NY Times article linked by Juturna. I am still waiting for someone/anyone to put forth a lucid argument as to why revenues need to be increased to reduce the deficit, rather than simply reducing spending. Conservatives do not want taxes raised, because we want to reverse the steady growth of government and to keep dollars in the hands of investors and consumers who will spur the economy.
I could never vote for Bachman, because she has no executive leadership experience. By wishing the U.S. had defaulted, she also failed to display empathy and optimism necessary for a leader to maintain her moral authority. The debate was very useful for exposing her shortcomings.
Never said she did personally insult me. “She indicated it wasn’t a quick or easy read.” Best spin I ever saw! I mean…..WOW!
You should hear Bachmann’s promo video at the Iowa straw poll. I totally need a bucket! And doggone it, I’ve got to take away the spin award from Moon (sorry for being an Indian-Giver, and give it to Bachmann. They should make the prisoners at Gitmo watch this thing over and over and over. I promise they’ll talk fast. I’m serious….forget water-boarding!
You really think complete private sector control of the economy is going to save us? I don’t think you do. What I saw in that article was a presentation of several ideas. I agree Cargo, I should have added requires thinking. Who is foolish enough to limit their opinions to one person, one article, one solution or one party. That was the point of my comment. It’s not that simple – The article made me think – regardless if you agree with some parts of it or not, it was certainly more informative reading than most posts to that point.
Developing a position should also include understanding in depth what we don’t want. That article and subsequnt reading spurred by that article did convince me that some stimulus is necessary and that it could come in various forms – tax code adjustments (enhanced revenue), regulation reversal, keeping interest rates down…..
I now have a different understanding of stimulus and increased tax revenue. Now when I listen I will wait for their definition of those terms and not react when I hear ‘stimulus’ or ‘tax enhancement’.
Well, anyway the disussion has improved….
Any solution to this mess is going to come from a blend of ideas and philosophies.
I think blogs have replaced the venting opportunities lost to us when telemarketers went away.
Still waiting to hear ‘dearest Juturna, I am sorry I was an over-reactive, rude mouse….”
We can have a rational debate about Keynesianism, Monetarism, Supply-Side, etc., or the advantages/disadvantages of fiscal and monetary stimuli.
However, anyone advocating defaulting on our debt is nuts. The debt is simply raising the money to pay the bills for spending Congress has already approved. It’s like charging a lot of crap and then telling Visa you’ve changed your mind and won’t pay your bill. Yes, absolutely, let’s fight out spending and deficits during the budget process. That’s where that debate belongs. Threatening not to pay the bills we’ve already incurred is insane and harms everyone.
That long, childish charade called the debt-ceiling debate is one of the key factors that set the market psychology of uncertainty that created the volatility we’ve been having, and the losses in everyone’s retirement savings.
Dearest Juturna, I mistook your last line….my apologies for popping off.
Who cares? Manners is a multi-syllable word. I knew what I meant when I said it. Believe I sent that article this morning without opinion. I had none. I found it “STIMULATING” which has become a dirty word. Hmm now that avenue of thought is interesting too….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRN6Jb8jHns&feature=related
What jumped out at me in the article was how Democrats and Republicans are really tied to sound byte words. ‘tax and spend?’ PUH-leez. Republicans, there is no free lunch. Democrats, quit being wusses.
There are ways to accomplish raising taxes and reducing entitlements without including the whole enchalada. For instance, mortage tax break was mentioned. Its pretty simple to get around this without destroying the housing market even further, which is what would happen if we did away with the mortgage tax break entirely.
Slap a ceiling on the mortage tax break. Give people a tax break up to $500,000 or some other figure that would earn a little $$$ for the feds and be done with it.
There are all sorts of ways to reducing spending on entitlements. Have those that can afford it pay a little more deductive on Medicare. Cut off the wives getting half their husbands (whether they are married to them or not) SS while the husband is still alive. Why should a spouse get to go cherry pick social security, especially if there have been multiple marriages. And I should have said spouses, not wives and husbands.
These idiot politicians think compromise has to be all or nothing. Compromise can be within ideas without throwing out the baby with the bath water.
This is what I was looking for….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seYO0hkIF54&feature=related
Thank you everyone, especially Pokie. That’s what I like about him. He mans up.
@Need to Know
NTK, I totally agree. I just couldn’t express it as eloquently as you just did.
Bauchmann is slowly blowing it and will join the ranks of those folks that have the opportunity to say the easy thing out loud using words like never, ever, won’t and enjoying the roars of the crowd. But that’s why they’re strill on stages behind podiums instead of leading the country. Watching the debates it’s interesting to see what some don’t do. So while we enjoy the drama and the wisecracks, we know that’s not who we want as our President.
Oh, Pokie – appreciate it.
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you, Moon. When I speak of following an unknown knight on a white horse, I am referring to the voters who massed behind Obama, not those who promoted his candidacy from within. The latter, like David Axelrod, for instance, certainly had to know the guy in depth. They are also undoubtedly the ones who have arranged for that tight hold on much of his background information. They were the “professionals” who packaged the product and who decided what I and you could know and what we could not. Hypothetically, had this guy presented to me the standard form for a background check and left as many blanks as he has in his personal resume vis-a-vis the voting public, he would have been told to fill out the complete form to the last detail or get up and leave.
I am glad that Slowpoke caught the significance of that phrase about tingling legs. Chris Matthews was exactly the person I had in mind when I wrote it. Matthews has stamped himself forever with that one sentence.
There is another factor in all this: the media and what I see as a falling away on all sides of true professional journalistic standards. When McCain nominated Palin as his Number Two, I, like a lot of other people, knew almost nothing about her. I had to start searching the web for background information. However, I soon got a lot of help from the media and miscellaneous bloggers both pro and con. I began to think I might wake up one day and find that somebody had put a peephole in her boudoir door. Alas, no such help with regard to Obama. Even the media and bloggers opposing him seemed unable to crack through the barriers. I lay a lot of blame on conservative Fox commentators especially for going for back fence gossip instead of showing us what real investigative talent is. So, I and others wound up in a very strange position. Eventually we knew more about the life and background of the Republican Veep nominee than we have ever known to this day about the man in the Oval Office.
That man is a grad of Harvard Law and was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, a post to which he was elected without, to my knowledge, ever having made a written contribution to that review. (How and why he got elected is beside the point.) He later spent a brief time as a constitutional law professor in Chicago. Maybe I have missed something here, but I would certainly appreciate it if someone could show me some solid, peer-reviewed academic output in which he has explained in depth his personal legal views with regard to the Constitution. I don’t know about you, but I kind of think that might be important in helping us to decide between political candidates for our highest elected office. His actions in office have helped to clear the air somewhat in this regard; but, in many ways, he is still very much a blank page to me and to many others. I would prefer to have a handle on things like this BEFORE someone achieves high office.
This man walked into the Oval Office without a written academic trail to be examined, with a relatively short and not very distinguished legislative record, and with virtually no managerial experience at all, much less a record of being able to handle significant budgetary and fiscal affairs in a true decision-making capacity. In my view, this makes him that unknown knight on a white horse for whom the stars just happened to be in good confluence, so to speak. In other words, he got lucky. Even I, as an independent conservative voter with strong suspicions about this mystery man, had to be carried kicking and screaming to the polling place figuratively because I have never had a high opinion of McCain as a politician and a campaigner, putting aside his Vietnam War record. I tell you, conservative bloggers elsewhere were all over my derriere whenever I raised on my personal criticisms of McCain as a candidate.
As for Palin. Funny but I tend to agree with Moe Davis in some ways. Palin is marginalizing herself by depending on visuals and sound bytes. If she wants to remain a serious factor in national politics, she has to stop playing cute games and start putting some serious, in-depth commentary out in the public eye on the issues of the times. She is now in a postion of having to prove that she has a command of the issues. Maybe that is no longer possible. The hatred of her by some out there is so visceral that I doubt any serious efforts on her part would draw reasoned and civil discussion beyond snide references to her personal moral beliefs, the sex life of her family, and her collegiate meanderings as a youth.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
You fail at YouTube, dude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocv5WdBmSok
Wolverine – You and I being in general agreement has to mean the planets are out of alignment or something equally bad.
For what it’s worth, a law review editor would likely not publish a journal article. Some students get published in law journals, but more often than not journal articles are written by attorneys – mostly law professors – or other specialists with expertise in a particular area. I have published a few journal articles and they were all done many years after I graduated from law school. The editors, particularly the chief editors, are usually involved in managing and editing rather than writing. Here’s a link to the Harvard Law Review where they explain how people are selected for law review. http://www.harvardlawreview.org/hlr_477.php
When President Obama was teaching at the University of Chicago he was in a part-time, non-tenure track billet. Pasted below is what the University of Chicago Law School says about his service on the faculty (I won’t post the URL to avoid going into moderation). Professors that want to get tenure are expected to write and get published (hence all the articles they do for law journals). As the law school notes, Obama was offered a tenure track position and declined. The fact he did not publish while he was a student editor on the Harvard Law Review or a lecturer at the University of Chicago is not anything out of the ordinary.
(From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School’s Senior Lecturers has high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined.)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! So true!
@Wolverine
“I tell you, conservative bloggers elsewhere were all over my derriere whenever I raised on my personal criticisms of McCain as a candidate.”
They were against you because you DIDN’T like him? I found the opposite to be true. Most conservative bloggers couldn’t stand McCain.
@Cato the Elder
I’m sorry, but I still LOVE the Fish Called Wanda apology stuff.
Not so much in my neck of the woods, Cargo. However, the operative words were not necessarily clap your hands and praise McCain but, rather, that McCain was at least preferable to Obama. But I will say that McCain got a real spike when he brought Palin aboard. Sometimes I felt that some people were so focused on Palin’s conservatism that McCain became sort of a back burner in the whole deal. Weird election that was. There was a point when I was sorely tempted to say screw it to the whole thing. And I have never missed a national election in my life, even by absentee ballot.
What he spiked with conservatives, he lost with moderates who were supporting him. re McCain bringing Palin on board.
Points taken, Moe. However, you would think that someone in his position with national aspirations would want to lay his well-crafted and considered views out there, especially if he had a pretty clear shot at law review publication acceptance either at Harvard or U. of Chicago. But, then, maybe not………Might have depended on how his political gurus were advising him.
I will reiterate my personal feelings about Palin. She has reached a point where she should seriously publish on national and international issues or risk perishing from the national scene. Actually, it may be too late already — at least for this election cycle.
So where does Bachmann fit in to this discussion? Is she appealing to only a small, esoteric group of people?
Too early to tell, Moon. I’ve never given all that much credence to the straw poll in Iowa. I prefer to wait for the actual primaries. There is one thing, though. I have listened to Bachmann speak about taxes and revenue. She seems to know her stuff — expected, I guess, for someone who actually has a law degree in that area. As for appeal to a narrow group, I think that often seems to be a factor in the Iowa deal. It should be determined one way or another more strongly as the primaries come. It might carry over in South Carolina — not so much in New Hampshire, though. But, after that…..?
To say that she wished that the USA had gone in to default shows that she is not in touch with reality, in my opinion. Having a degree in anything doesn’t mean much, I guess. There is no way that a default would help our situation. I doubt if we could find any economist who would recommend such action.
If Bachmann knows her stuff on taxes and revenue (not questioning that) then why on earth would she make the default comment? Default became a political tool for her- she was discredited in my mind.
@Wolverine
I understand now. I was telling conservatives that, yep, McCain sucked. BUT, he won the primary and that’s what primaries are for. After that…you go to war with the army you have. And Palin was a plus…..McCain is old….. 😈
Straw polls, with Paul in one of them? He’ll be in the top three. The Paul supporters are very active.
@Cargo, obviously it doesn’t concern you that someone like Palin has no idea how Washington works?