Category: politics

Bam! George Will on Huckabee, Gingrich and the coming GOP apocalypse

I am coming late to this party, but I am just glad to be here.

George Will explained concisely in his Sunday column why any Republican with a set of working neurons is really nervous about 2012. Let me start where Will finishes:

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

Notice that Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich are not on that list. Will delineates with precision that these two men have fallen on the Obama-is-not-a-real-American sword in such a way that they may not only impale themselves but also the rest of the party. 

Huckabee disappoints the most as he first panders to two far right talk show hosts about Obama’s birth place. Huckabee first told Steve Malzberg that the current President grew up in Kenya, then later after being called on the error, said he simply meant Indonesia and went on a bit to the second, Bryan Fischer, about Obama and community madrassas. Will dismisses the excuses and notes that such episodes have consequences:

Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich, who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mentality.

Let’s pull over and park here a minute. There in a nutshell is my point about why GOP candidates are digging themselves a hole by doing puff interviews on the American Family Radio network with Bryan Fischer. The current crop of contenders is so intent on injuring Obama that anything goes, and in the process, the critic is injured more than the target.

Will then dismisses Gingrich’s affair with Dinesh D’Souza’s theories about Obama.

To the notion that Obama has a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, the sensible response is: If only. Obama’s natural habitat is as American as the nearest faculty club; he is a distillation of America’s academic mentality; he is as American as the other professor-president, Woodrow Wilson. A question for former history professor Gingrich: Why implicate Kenya?

Reading Gingrich further, he calls Obama’s world view “factually insane” and says the President “is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works.” In addition to Will’s correction of Gingrich’s picture of Obama, I offer this. Gingrich’s hyperbole obscures any serious consideration of his ideas from those he most wants to reach. He is talking trash to the choir; most others dismiss him after the first sentence or two. Gingrich, Huckabee, Malzberg and Fischer almost make Obama look appealing by comparison, even to some of the choir.

Now let me end where Will began:

If pessimism is not creeping on little cat’s feet into Republicans’ thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.

Color me pessimistic.

Donald Trump for President?

March Madness is here.

And I don’t mean NCAA basketball.

GOP suits are in Iowa testing the waters for a run at the nomination. The most entertaining aspect has to be the potential for Donald Trump to enter the fray. Although Trump was not there, he sent a water tester along to find out what Iowa is.

Michael Cohen, executive vice president and special counsel to Trump’s company, met with Iowa Republicans.

“We do understand that Iowa is the first stop if anyone is interested in the presidential election. Certainly … we are very anxious to learn about Iowa and be able to report back to Mr. Trump when he hopefully decides to run in June,” Cohen said.

Always good to do due diligence prior to a big purchase.

If Trump gets the nomination, I think he should choose his VP like he runs his reality show The Apprentice; call it Vice-President Apprentice. Put Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrinch on a team and Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Mike Huckabee on another team. Trump could fire someone after each challenge and end up with his Veep. Watching the board room antics would be must see TV.

Why is Huckabee using the madrassa attack on Bryan Fischer’s show?

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, Fox talk show host, and probable GOP presidential contender got himself into some trouble when he said Obama learned anti-American ways growing up in Kenya. Later he said he misspoke and meant Indonesia. Kenya. Indonesia. Practically next door neighbors. Whatever.

Anyway, he had just about come through the storm of his birther-speak when he appeared on Bryan Fischer’s Focal Point show to complain about Obama’s childhood some more. On Fischer’s show, Huckabee said:

And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas. (emphasis supplied by Salon’s Steve Kornacki)

A madrassa of course is a Muslim school, with recent associations to radical elements of Islam. While nasty, Huckabee is not terribly original in his attack. Properly or not, Hillary Clinton was credited for unearthing this fact early in 2007.

Terry, this is appearing on a Web site today, Insight magazine, which is a subsidiary of The Washington Times. Here’s the question. I’ll put it up on the screen: Barack’s madrassa past. He says that “during the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominately Muslim school.” That’s from his book, “The Audacity of Hope.”

Now in the meantime, this is what Democrats are saying, according to Insight magazine. They’re looking into his background. They’re saying: He was a Muslim. He concealed it. His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign.

Now, we have heard about dirty politics before. Republicans aren’t involved in this one. What do you think about what’s going on over there?

TERRY HOLT, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: John, the last time I checked, there was still a freedom of religion in this country. And this is either a despicable act by an absolutely ruthless Clinton political machine. We know that they are capable of doing this. But it wasn’t directly linked to Hillary Clinton. If it wasn’t her, then certainly she should disavow it because I think we have spent an awful lot of time in this country trying to tamp down anti-religious sentiments.

Note what Republican Holt said about the effort to paint Obama as a radical Muslim – “a despicable act.” As Holt pointed out later in the interview, when Obama went to school, a madrassa was similar to any other parochial school associated with a religious view.

Now beyond Huckabee’s confusion of Kenya with Indonesia and his below-the-belt attack on Obama’s childhood is the fact that he is again propping up Bryan Fischer and the American Family Association. As regular readers here know, Fischer believes homosexuals are responsible for “six million dead Jews” during WWII, wants to ban construction of new mosques, and believes that Native Americans got what was coming to them in the near eradication of their tribes during the American settlement and expansion. The American Family Association has been silent on their official position on any of these matters and offers a considerable platform for Fischer’s supremacist views.

Is Huckabee so desperate for an audience that he needs to make news in that fringe-right environment? As Salon’s Kornacki points out, Huckabee is now making this ugly, and I add that he found one of the ugliest places to do it.

Committee chair says Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill may not be considered

Stephen Tashobya, the Chair of the Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Committee in Uganda’s Parliament told me yesterday that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill may not be considered during this sesssion of Parliament.

By phone, Tashobya told me that the committee still has many important bills to get through and when asked about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, said, “I am not sure if we will get to that one now.”

He did not know when Parliament would be called back to session but felt it would be next week at the earliest. He said he would know more at that time but was now uncertain that there would be time to move the Anti-Homosexuality Bill given the number of other bills to be considered.

This disclosure stands in contrast to Hon. Tashobya’s earlier prediction that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would be considered very soon after the elections.

For additional posts on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, click the link.

Note: For the record, Tashobya, nor I, said the bill has been shelved, if by shelved one means it is no longer possible to bring it up before the end of Parliament’s current session in May. While his statements indeed represent a positive development, it is premature to make a final conclusion based on a couple of sentences from the committee chair. I will have a follow up with Tashobya in a couple of weeks. Then, I think we will know more certainly where things are.

Department of Justice won’t defend DOMA, advocates “heightened scrutiny”

Old news by now, but I am including the post by request to facilitate discussion.

Some see it as a way to maintain support among younger voters since they favor gay marriage. I think this puts more pressure on the GOP to come out strongly against gay marriage in order to differentiate the party on the issue. While I think that would be misguided and cut against them in the general election, I am pretty sure this will be a big deal during the primary season.

To better understand the legal issues involved, see this article which reviews the different types of scrutiny a discriminatory law must go through. Also here is AG Holder’s letter laying out the Administration’s position and support for a heightened scrutiny analysis.

To those who say equal rights is not linked with legal assessments of status, I say read the letter and this article.