My latest column looks at what the Democrats pretty much didn’t do at their convention: Lie. Yes, all parties twist the truth. But Republicans and the Romney campaign have been distinguishing them by disregarding facts altogether. Here’s a clip:
Perhaps more important, while the Romney campaign has made clear it will “not let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” the Obama campaign has paid attention to feedback and corrected itself to hew to truth. As one example, since fact checkers like Politifact have said that saying Romney will “end Medicare as we know it” is accurate but just saying he will “end Medicare” is a misrepresentation, Bill Clinton used the more accurate version in his DNC remarks. The Obama campaign is trying to seriously outline the choice in this election with attention to facts, while the Romney campaign is one giant “talking point in search of facts” as Politifact once accused.
You can read my column here.
In my latest column for Salon, I reflect on Mitt Romney’s speech at the RNC. I write that Romney may actually be a very nice and moderate guy but it doesn’t matter — he’s just a mask for the unyielding and extreme power of the Republican right:
So what if the speech Romney gave last night might be closer to his inherent temperament than the nasty campaign he’s been running? Who cares? It doesn’t matter either way! The fact is, Mitt Romney is now the candidate of the Republican right, whether they wanted each other or not. The radical wing of the Republican Party is now providing every drop of money and muscle for Romney’s campaign. He owes them and they own him.
Fox News asked me to write the liberal response to Paul Ryan’s GOP convention speech last night. So I did. I described it in three words: Dazzling, Deceiving and Distracting.
Here’s a sample:
On the other hand, to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.
The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.
Do read the entire piece here. It’s making quite a stir.
It was even tweeted by comedian (and voice of Remy the rat in my kid’s favorite movie, Ratatouille!) Patton Oswalt:
Wow.WOW.FOX News calls bullshit on Ryan’s lie-packed speech:fxn.ws/OzkZ8f
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) August 30, 2012
…. which was way cooler than Paul Ryan’s speech. Lying ain’t very presidential.
UPDATE: And now a tweet from Rob Delaney (guess the comedians are loving me today):
Here’s a FOX News article for your dad: foxnews.com/opinion/2012/0…
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) August 30, 2012
When Romney and Republicans smear the President on welfare while hooting “We did build it!”, the result is a subtle but unmistakable othering based on racial anxiety. From my latest Salon column:
It is no coincidence that while every other Democratic president has been granted the presumption of good intent to grow the private sector and strengthen America generally, President Obama has been uniquely attacked as both un-American and a socialist. Add to that the inescapable context of the president’s blackness and the welfare smears and the “We did build that!” statement is as much about implicitly praising the hardworking, mostly white Republican base as it is implicitly demeaning the lazy, socialist black president. How could Obama build anything when not only is he so busy destroying America but he hasn’t even had a real job with “actual responsibilities”? In the us-versus-them story line, Mitt Romney is grouped with hard work and success and Barack Obama is grouped with laziness and irresponsibility. In her RNC speech, Ann Romney took one subtle but pointed dig in saying that, if elected, her husband will “work harder” than President Obama.
Please read and share the full essay. I think it’s an important conversation we all need to be having.
At a recent campaign stop, Paul Ryan repeated a common conservative talking point in this election: “Government’s job is not to pick winners and losers in the economy.” No, but apparently Republicans think it’s their job to pick winners and losers in society more broadly — which is exactly what their new party platform does.
Republicans apparently welcome an expansive and intrusive role for government in engineering and re-engineering our social norms and relationships. Nowhere is that more clear than in the proposed 2012 Republican Party platform, which one platform committee member boasted is “the most conservative platform in modern history”. Here’s a look at who should win and who should lose in America, according to the Republican Party:
Losers: Gay people
The Republican platform committee rejected the input of gay Republican groups and embraced the extremist language of conservative hate groups to write that the battle over marriage equality is “an assault on the foundations of our society, challenging the institution which, for thousands of years in virtually every civilization, has been entrusted with the rearing of children and the transmission of cultural values”. And rather than hiding behind a feigned moderate position that gay rights issues should be left to the states, the draft platform activists “applaud the citizens of the majority of States which have enshrined in their constitutions the traditional concept of marriage, and we support the campaigns underway in several other states to do so”. The Party also embraces altering the United States Constitution to take away rights from loving, same-sex couples. The platform section then goes on to insult not only gay families but single-parent households before ending with an ironic assertion that “all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity” — an assertion wholly undercut by the platform itself.
Winners: Fertilized eggs
While the Republican Party platform would take rights away from loving gay couples, the party would give more rights to fertilized eggs — promoting a constitutional “personhood” amendment to declare that, at the moment of conception, a microscopic fetus has the same legal rights and protections as living, breathing human being. The consequence of such a measure would be to not only to ban all abortions but restrict certain forms of birth control and fertility treatments and, potentially, subject women who even inquire about abortion services to criminal penalties. And despite the fact that over three-quarters of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or some cases, the Republican Party platform bans all abortions outright with no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
Losers: Women in the military
Not only are women directly affected by the Republican platform’s draconian, anti-choice positions, the draft platform condemns “social experimentation” in the military and would move to keep women soldiers off the front lines of combat. Notably, the platform committee tried to paint this as an effort to protect women’s rights: “We support the advancement of women in the military…[and] We support women’s exemption from direct ground combat units and infantry battalions.” It’s very kind of the Republican Party to want to support women to not get hurt by bumping their heads on the glass ceiling of opportunity by, benevolently, moving opportunities for women further out of reach.
Winners: Military contractors
Apparently not reluctant to “socially engineer” the United States Constitution, the Republican Party platform endorses a constitutional amendment that would make it infinitely more difficult, if not impossible, for our government to raise taxes. Yet, while the anti-choice amendment does not include any exceptions in cases of rape or incest, the tax amendment does include an exception — for military spending. And so while the Republican Party wants to downgrade the rights and liberties of women who have been raped and gay couples, it wants to protect the ability of military contractors (and donors) to bilk taxpayers. How else would the supposedly deficit-cutting GOP be able to propose increasing defense spending during a recession, as Paul Ryan does in his House budget plan.
Losers: Police
Of course, if you don’t allow the government to raise taxes — ever — then it becomes hard to pay for vital public services like police and firefighters, for which many cities and states rely on federal spending to subsidize. This is a problem for unemployment, which despite over 29 months of consistent private sector job growth, has remained high largely because of public sector layoffs. What’s more, especially in tough economic times, not only are Americans more reliant on public spending like food stamps and unemployment checks, but cutting public jobs means cutting the spending that those workers put into our communities and small businesses. But certainly, in the wake of so many mass shooting incidents, Republicans must see the need for police and first responders who can make sure our kids get to school safely without needing to pack heat, right? Wrong…
Winners: Gun vigilantes
Although many police oppose so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, the GOP platform embraces such laws and supports federal legislation to extend carry laws. And, in a sign that conservatives are more allegiant to ideology than facts, the head of the Family Research Council secured a plank in the Republican platform that would expand gun rights in the District of Columbia — in spite of the fact that the FRC was the recent target of a shooting. While even the vast majority of NRA members and other gun owners support basic, common sense gun laws, the Republican platform would put more guns in more people’s hands and let them use them in more legal ways — and yet limit the number of cops ensuring public safety.
In the Republican Party vision for the future of America, there are very clear winners and losers. This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t a misrepresentation. This is the draft Republican Party platform, the clearest statement of the party’s priorities, crafted by its most prominent and celebrated leaders. If Republicans really object to government picking winners and losers, they should stop enshrining social castes in their party platform. And if Republicans really object to being labeled extremists, they should stop pursuing such an extremist agenda.
My latest column for Salon, about the hurricane that threatened the Republican National Convention:
The fact that Hurricane Isaac is threatening the Republican National Convention is not, as some Democrats have argued, evidence of karma. But it is evidence of climate change — undermining the best efforts of Republicans to deny that it even exists.
The evidence of climate change and its links to stronger and more frequent hurricanes is undeniable:
“There is no doubt that climate has changed,” IPCC’s Christopher Field told the Senate’s environmental and public workers committee. “There is also no doubt that a changing climate changes the risks of extremes” — such as the more extreme temperatures, droughts and wildfires we’ve seen quickly increase in this year alone. And yes, according to a study published in the journal Nature and James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, climate change is responsible for the lengthening of the hurricane season in the United States and increasing the severity and frequency of hurricanes
And yet, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and virtually every speaker at the RNC are climate change deniers. How can that be???
Let me see if I have this right: Republicans don’t think that people who have served time in prison for felonies should have their voting rights restored, but they are damn keen on current inmates being able to run for President — so long as they’re running against Obama?
Today, the GOP put out this “news”:
Meanwhile, Republicans have firmly stood against restoring the voting rights of felons. During the Republican primary, a SuperPAC supporting Mitt Romney ran an ad attacking Rick Santorum for supporting felon re-enfranchisement.
Republicans have also long supported the practice of counting people for Census purposes (and, thus, the apportionment of Members of Congress and federal benefits) in the usually red districts in which they are incarcerated, instead of the usually blue districts in which they live.
In other words, Republicans don’t want people who have served their time to vote — let alone be allowed to vote while in prison. BUT Republicans are happy to exploit inmates to boost conservative representation in Congress or to stage political stunts that take jabs at the President. Seems to me that kind of blatant hypocrisy is what’s criminal.
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