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We are not quite done yet with GOP “debates” - Mr. Huckabee will host his third presidential forum on Saturday, an executive for the Fox News Channel said on Tuesday. Huckabee, Gasparino and Mrs. Mitch McConnell! I hope those unfortunate “Ohio residents” have their affairs in order, because if a just Judeo-Christian god is ever going to smite those among His followers who have profaned His honor, this event would seem a good place to start.

image: socialistexan

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Santorum makes zero mention of jobs in CNN debate - In total, the four GOP contenders mentioned the word “jobs” only 10 times over the span of two hours — and former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) uttered the word a grand total of zero times. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said the word four times each. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) mentioned it twice (one of those mentions was in reference to “the job Barack Obama isn’t doing”). Moderator John King said the word “jobs” four times.

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GOP debate audience (pictured above) boos contraception question - During a CNN-sponsored Republican presidential debate in Arizona, the crowd booed wildly at the mention of birth control. […] Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called the Obama administration’s decision to have all health plans cover contraception for women an “attack on religious conscience.” “I don’t think we’ve seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we’ve seen under Barack Obama,” the candidate explained. For his part, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum defended his earlier remarks about “the dangers of contraception”…

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Tonight’s GOP debate: will Rick Santorum embrace his religious fanaticism? Will there be starbursts?

Jed Lewison brings up a good point about tonight’s GOP debate – Rick Santorum’s answer to the religion question will define Wednesday’s debate:

With Rick Santorum’s radical views on the role of religion in public life under fire not just from those of us on the left but also Mitt Romney’s allies in the Republican establishment, here’s an easy prediction for tomorrow’s debate: How Santorum handles the “are you a religious fanatic and/or would you govern as one?” question will define the debate. Thanks to Newt Gingrich’s famous outburst, John King might not have the guts to open the debate with that question, but there’s no way he can avoid asking it without looking like a total idiot. When he does, if Santorum betrays even a hint of defensiveness in his answer, it could be a disaster for his candidacy. On the other hand, if he goes on the attack against his critics, it could send starbursts flying throughout the GOP and presage a mad rush to his candidacy like the one Gingrich experienced in South Carolina.

Will the typically angry, low-info, resentful, cheering-for-executions-and-deaths-of-the-uninsured teabaggy audience applaud louder for an American Theocracy as envisioned by the little mullah, or for an American Plutocracy as plotted by the King of Bain? Tune in!

February 22, 2012: 8pm ET on CNN – Live Stream
Location: Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona
Sponsor: CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona
Participants: Romney, Santorum, Paul, Gingrich

Things said at the New Hampshire GOP debate last night

Besides preferring to be at some safe, American, good ol’ boys shooting range rather than another GOP debate, Perry also said last night that he’d send troops right back into Iraq! See video…

Mitt Romney said last night that he thinks only wealthy people should run for office:

Recalling something his father, who served as governor of Michigan, told him, Romney said, “He had good advice to me. He said, ‘Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage. If you find yourself in a position when you can serve, why you ought to have a responsibility to do so if you think you can make a difference, you oughta have a responsibility to do so.’” A few moments later,

Romney bragged about making former senator Ted Kennedy take out a mortgage on his house when Romney ran against him. “I was happy that he had to take a mortgage out on his house to ultimately defeat me,” Romney said.

Here were their ‘thoughts’ on same-sex marriage:

NEWT GINGRICH: We want to make it possible to have those things that are most intimately human between friends.

RICK SANTORUM: I’m certainly not going to have a federal law that bans adoption for gay couples, when there are only gay couples in certain states.

MITT ROMNEY: There is every right for people in this country to form long-term committed relationships with one another. That doesn’t mean that they have to call it marriage.

RICK PERRY: That is a war against religion and it’s going to stop under a Perry administration.

I don’t even know what Gingrich means.

And here’s an interesting exchange between Mitt and Newt:

ROMNEY: “This for me, politics is not a career,” Romney, who began running for office in 1994, replied. “For me, my career was being in business. … I long for a day when, instead of having people who go to Washington for 20 and 30 years, who get elected and then when they lose office, they stay there and they make money as lobbyists or connecting to businesses. I think it stinks.”

GINGRICH: “Look, can we drop a little bit of the pious boloney? The fact is, you ran in 94 and lost. That’s why you weren’t serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is you had a very bad re-election rating. You dropped out of office. You had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn’t have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what to do. You were running for president while you were governor.”

“You then promptly re-entered politics. You happened to lose to [Arizona Sen. John McCain] as you had lost to [former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy]. Now, you’re back running. You’ve been running consistently for years and years and years and years. So, this idea that suddenly citizenship showed up in your mind, just level with the American people. You’ve been running for at least since the 1990s.”

Put Mitt and Newt together and you’ve got the best pious baloney sandwich ever.

A message to the Republican voting base

Your ADD hurts us all.

William Saletan thinks the GOP candidates waged class warfare during the debate last night, with their many protests about over-taxing the proletariat. He says:

I’m not suggesting, of course, that the Republicans are actually Marxists. They’re just speaking up for compassion, social mobility, and progressive taxation. There’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is crying “class warfare” when Obama does the same thing.

Saletan must not be aware of the proud tradition of double-standards inherent with the GOP. Whatever they do / say is fine. Different rules for Democrats though.

image: @mattchew03

Photos / video: Last night’s GOP WWE Smack Down!

From Joe.My.God: Mitt Romney and Rick Perry came thisclose to ripping out a bitch’s weave tonight.

Video of where shit got real:

Two videos: Perry’s BFF, Pastor Jeffress, who says Mormonism is “a cult” vs. The Book of Mormon’s “I Believe”

WHO HAS A DIRECT LINE TO GOD? Which GOP candidate for president would have Jesus on speed dial — Romney or Perry?

Conservatives Slam Rick Perry For Failure To Rebuke ‘Moron’ Pastor Who Called Mormonism ‘A Cult’

At the Value Voters Summit last Friday, the First Baptist Church of Dallas’ Senior Pastor Robert Jeffress — who introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) at the event — decried Mormonism as “a cult” that is definitively “not Christianity.” “The decision for evangelical Christians right now is going to be do we prefer someone who is truly a believer in Jesus Christ or someone…who is part of a cult,” he said, seemingly referring to Mormon GOP candidates Mitt Romney and John Huntsman. To Jeffress, Perry is the “genuine follower of Jesus Christ.”

Perry’s campaign first said “the governor doesn’t judge what is in the heart and soul of others,” but then issued a statement that “he does not believe [Mormonism] is a cult.” That bare-bones remark has done little, however, to assuage Huntsman, who flatly called Jeffress a “moron.” “The fact that, you know, some moron can stand up and make a comment like that, you know, first of all, it’s outrageous,” Huntsman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. When asked how he thought Perry should react, Huntsman declared, “Make an immediate and decisive break. Period”

Robert Jeffress (Rick Perry’s BFF) said that if America elects a Mormon we will receive God’s judgment –

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In Mitt Romney’s defense: The Book of Mormon’s – “I Believe”:

image: akagoldfish

Education: President Obama vs. GOP presidential candidates and Fox News viewers

Let’s take a quick look at the views on education / the Dept. of Education between President Obama and the GOP presidential candidates and their fan base:

Obama Says Better Public School System Key to Economic Recovery | Bloomberg

President Barack Obama said improving the nation’s public schools is crucial to the U.S.’s economic recovery as he highlighted his decision to let states sidestep the No Child Left Behind law by raising education standards.

“Education is an essential part of this economic agenda,” the president said today in a weekly radio and Internet address that urged Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs plan that includes money for teachers and schools. “It is an undeniable fact that countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow. Businesses will hire wherever the highly skilled, highly trained workers are located.”

If the U.S. is “serious about building an economy that lasts” and strengthening the middle class, “we had better be serious about education,” Obama said. “We have to pick up our game and raise our standards.”

Now compare the ideas from the Fox “News” GOP debate this past week:

Abolish the Education Department? Abandoned Idea Gets New Life | Fox “News”

“I am going to promise to advocate the abolishment of the federal Department of Education.” — former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

“What I would do as president of the United States is pass the mother of all repeal bills on education. Then I would go over to the Department of Education, I’d turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would spend all the money back to the states and localities.” — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann

“You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations.” — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich

“In 1980, when the Republican Party ran, part of the platform was to get rid of the Department of Education. By the year 2000, (that issue) was eliminated, and we fed on to it. Then … Republicans added No Child Left Behind.” — complained Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas

While Herman Cain said he would eliminate the EPA on TV, online viewers answered the same question on the YouTube.com/FoxNews channel, and they overwhelmingly favored eliminating the Department of Education. Via: Google Public Sector blogspot
47% of Fox viewers would eliminate the Dept. of Education!

In summary:

The result of [Roger Ailes] concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what’s going on in the world. According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Shariah law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama’s citizenship. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland reveals, ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That’s because Ailes isn’t interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimization. — Tim Dickinson | Rolling Stone

JUST TO CLEAR UP THIS DELUDED THOUGHT PROCESS: There’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats! Just like Bush! Doesn’t matter IF you vote or who you vote for!

Related:

image: paxamericana

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If the audiences at the Teaparty GOP debates won’t convince people to vote, NOTHING WILL.

Mother Jones tracks the evil that is the modern Republican / Teaparty:

At the Reagan Library debate in California, attendees memorably broke into a spontaneous round of applause in support of Rick Perry’s record on the death penalty.
At last week’s debate in Tampa, a handful of audience members cheered the prospect of a man without health insurance being left to die.
And [last night] in Orlando, a chorus of boos erupted when a gay Army veteran [of the IRAQ WAR] asked former Sen. Rick Santorum if he should still be allowed to serve the country.

Got that? The teaparty Republican base cheers death and boos an Army vet.

Look at what the people in these audiences value, and then consider this: they show up to the voting booth. ALWAYS. Every time. They also count on the left, liberal, progressive, moderate, “not them” voter to stay home because of whatever current idealistic boo-boo or disappointment or ‘statement’ is being announced by ‘liberal leaders’ such as Ed Schultz or closet PUMAs like Jane Hamsher.

We can argue all day about what has possessed the people supporting the Teaparty GOP (*cough* Satan! *cough*), but this fact remains: these are the SAME PEOPLE who voted for George W. Bush. TWICE. They CAN do it again.

shortformblog:

Rick Perry bumbles and fumbles: Not to oversell it, but we think Romney got the better or Perry pretty badly just now. Even from a strict status standpoint, Romney seems much smoother and more fluid than Perry does, and it never showed more than during their last exchange, in which Perry’s attempt to accuse Romney of flip-flopping turned into an excruciatingly long, stumbling, labored speech. Romney came right back and hit Perry hard on Social Security — this has been a very good night for Mitt thusfar.

Check out DC Decoder for more coverage of the Google/Fox News GOP presidential debate!

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Perry’s files completely stopped loading here. Or the meds kicked in. Awkward!

jonathan-cunningham:

liberal-life:

Owned.

Or the 12,000 lives that could be prevented by cleaner air every year…

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Rick Perry’s idea of saving lives may be completely opposite from ours

Think Progress reports:

As much as Perry would like to shift the blame for his state’s high uninsurance rate — in fact, the number of uninsured has increased by approximately 2 million during his 11-year tenure — 26 percent of Texans don’t have access to health care coverage for four simple reasons: 1) many Texas jobs are low wage and don’t offer insurance, 2) Texas has some of the most restrictive Medicaid eligibility rules in the country, 3) insurance rates are largely unregulated (and are higher than the national average) and 4) the state has a large immigrant population that often can’t enroll because of legal concerns or other impediments. Perry himself hasn’t focused on the health care access problem during his governorship, despite advocating for significant reductions in the Medicaid program — including an 8 percent cut in reimbursement rates to hospitals in the latest state budget.

His requests for Medicaid “flexibility” from the federal government are unremarkable. As the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff points out, aside from a failed 2008 waiver request to “limit the number of beneficiaries and create a new, very sparse benefits plan” — which was too restrictive even for the Bush administration — Perry doesn’t have much to show for his 11 years in office…

TPM: Rick Perry’s Texas has executed 234 people during his tenure as governor.

[Moderator BRIAN] WILLIAMS: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you… (APPLAUSE)

It was probably the largest applause of the night…

Execution: a Republican crowd-pleaser. Perry is the kind of white man the GOP-teaparty has been dreaming of.

Who won the debate in Iowa last night? Four possible choices:

Anyone who didn’t watch it
President Obama
Rick Perry
Fox “News”

I watched the debate, to my own detriment, and didn’t hear ONE feasible idea or solution given by any of the candidates on stage. They threw around the word ‘jobs’ a few times but no one elaborated on how to create them. I don’t think the words “middle-class” were ever used.

Bachmann flat out lied about S&P’s reasons for the downgrade, and she did so calmly and thousand-yard-staring right into the camera. So that should tell you all you need to know about her.

Bachmann and Romney say they would NOT have raised the debt ceiling last week. Can you imagine the world of hurt we’d be in this week? I have to say I did admire Santorum’s speaking out against this kind of extremist lunacy with his “showmanship not leadership” scolding. To me, that sums up Bachmann, Palin, the Teaparty and the entire GOP Congress right now. Or as Andrew Sullivan says, “The current GOP doctrine is not conservatism, it’s anti-government radicalism”. That was on full display last night. Also, Santorum said the C-word (compromise) so, obviously, he’s out.

Of course Ron Paul had a couple sensible ideas. He was arguing to end the wars — which the crowd loved. No one else seems to want to end the wars. And auditing the Fed isn’t a bad idea either. But he won’t win the GOP nomination.

Newt Gingrich was just flat-out pissed off last night. It was like watching Michael Douglas in Falling Down, if Douglas was about 150 pounds heavier. He got into it with Chris Wallace and the crowd went wild! Gotcha questions and the lamestream media, dontcha know. How dare Wallace ask Newt about Newt?

Bachmann and Pawlenty had a couple of Minnesota-nice kerfluffles. Is she as useless as Pawlenty described? Or is Pawlenty really a version of Obama? All I know is, who else but Bachmann would crow about introducing the “Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act”? Right there, that’s the extent of her years in Congress.

However, when asked who would walk away from a 10:1 deal (spending cuts vs. tax increases), every one of them raised their hands. Every one of them, even “showmanship not leadership” Santorum and “let’s legalize all the drugs” Paul. And that’s just stupid. Seems they all agree that corporations should be more ‘competitive’ by way of further tax cuts.

So that’s all they’ve got: more tax cuts. Corporations are people, my friend!