Category Archives: GOP Hate-Mongering

Why immigration reform won’t be enough for the GOP to win Latino voters

Latino protesters march by the hotel where Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is scheduled to attend a fundraising event in Salt Lake City, Utah, September 17. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Latino protesters march by the hotel where Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is scheduled to attend a fundraising event in Salt Lake City, Utah, September 17. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The GOP remind me of the silent movie comedy group called The Keystone Kops.

The term has since come to be used to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes happened after a great deal of energy and activity, or if there was a lack of coordination among the members of the group. - Wiki

Less then a year ago members of the GOP were saying this, this and this about immigration.  After the 2012 election which gave Barack Obama 71% of the Latino vote, they are now trying to change their tune, thinking that they can actually get away with this current folly of theirs…

By the way, in my opinion, the term “illegal” is reprehensible when referring to any human being.

MSNBC

Republicans need to win more Latino voters if they want to remain a politically relevant party. The imperative to win back those voters is so strong that Senator John McCain openly admits it’s the reason others in his party are willing to embrace immigration reform, an issue many otherwise oppose.

But the bad news is that immigration reform may not be enough to help the party close the gap on the growing part of the American electorate.

Two key polls from 2012 explain why. A Pew survey found a majority of Hispanics say education, jobs/economy, and health care are “extremely important.” Only one in three said immigration was equally important. Even the federal budget deficit ranked higher, and Republicans have failed to win over Latino voters on that issue.

The Republican “small government” mantra won’t appeal to most Latinos either, as two in three said they preferred a “larger federal government with more services” over a smaller one in a Washington Post poll from last year.

Even some Republicans admit the chances for winning over the Latino electorate are slim. “Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” Congressman Lou Barletta told the Morning Call. “They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

But the biggest indication that the GOP is hopeless when it comes to shrinking the 44-point gap by which Romney lost Hispanic voters may be the memo sent to House Republicans yesterday.

Fresh off the heels of retreat events like “Successful Communication with Women and Minorities,” the conservative Hispanic Leadership Network is circulating a memo on the do’s and don’t’s of how Republicans should address immigration reform issues.

The do’s:

  • Acknowledge “our current immigration system is broken”
  • use the phrases “earned legal status” and “undocumented immigrants”

The don’t’s:

  • start the conversation out with “we are against amnesty”
  • use the phrases “pathway to citizenship,” “illegals,” “aliens,” or “anchor babies”

It’s not a good sign that Republicans are still learning to master the language to not offend the fastest growing demographic of the American electorate, but it’s dangerous to bank on any group of that sized voting on a single-issue.

Full memo below.

HLN memo

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, Immigration Reform

[Has] Fascism Taken Up Residence In the Republican Party?

fas·cism

Noun
  1. An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
  2. (in general use) Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.

The original title of this article makes a declarative statement.  I’m not sure I want to place the “fascist” label on the GOP just yet, but it looks pretty close.

Here’s an opinion worth reading…

PoliticusUSA

Most scholars agree that a fascist regime is foremost an authoritarian form of government, and as a political ideology, it referred to a political movement linked to Corporatism that existed in and ruled a single country (Italy) for less than 30 years. Early influences of fascist ideology date back to ancient Greece in the city state of Sparta that emphasized rule by a minority of elites and racial purity that was admired and embraced by the Nazis, and to preserve power in the hands of a few, it was necessary to deny equal rights to the population. According to most scholars of fascism, once in power, it historically attacked parliamentary liberalism, and attracted support primarily from the “far right” or “extreme right,” and in America fascism is the Republican Party.

When President Obama delivered his Inauguration speech on Monday, his message of equality for every citizen characterized America and the original intent of the Founding Fathers. Equality for all cannot be attributed to, or claimed as unique by, any particular political ideology, and it should be universally embraced by all Americans regardless their political or religious inclinations if they are indeed Americans. It is prescient then, that Republicans immediately assailed the President’s Inaugural Address for laying out a “liberal agenda,” and it informs that their perpetual war against liberalism is really a war against the Constitution and equal rights for all Americans. Even though Republicans portrayed the President’s inaugural speech as “far left” and out of the mainstream, the truth is the President was expressing the will of a majority of the American people who affirmed his American agenda in the last election that Republicans refuse to accept and will use any means to reverse.

A pair of polls revealed that Americans agree with the President that, intrinsically related to equality for all, taking care of the infirm, elderly, the poor, and victims of severe weather, and protecting the rights of gays, immigrants, and Americans exercising their right to vote is the agenda they expect as Americans. Republicans, however, oppose those basic rights as a matter of course and, regardless they are in the minority, to impose their Fascist agenda on the people, including attacking equal rights, they will rig elections and attempt to sway public opinion in their favor by attacking the President’s American agenda by labeling it “far left”  and extremist. It is the first time in memory that a political party has openly assailed equal rights as extremist, even though Republicans have spent decades opposing equal rights for all but white Christians and the wealthy, and to continue the practice, they will subvert the election process.

The news that Virginia Republicans secretly passed measures to rig elections in favor of Republican candidates for state and federal offices is a typically fascist ploy to seize power, but the practice is being repeated in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Florida; all Republican-controlled states that went Democratic in 2012. As Americans increasingly view the Republican Party negatively, and with even Republicans holding a dim view of Republicans in Congress, the GOP is attempting to take control of the government through any means necessary to implement their corporatist agenda and perpetuate the inequality Americans overwhelmingly reject as un-American.

To say the Republican Party is out of touch with the American people’s wishes, or are deliberately preventing equality for all Americans, is an understatement of epic proportion. They are against gay rights, women’s right to choose, maintaining worker-funded retirement and healthcare programs, and assistance for Veterans, the poor, elderly, and children that is contrary to the will of the voters and what it means to be American. Since they cannot legislate inequality from the halls of Congress and White House, they have enlisted the assistance of religious extremists and gun-fanatics with fear-mongering and claims President Obama is “shredding the Constitution” and give more than tacit approval to calls for a revolution.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that in giving the Inaugural Address, President Obama acted like America is a far left, liberal population instead of center-right leaning, but when in America’s history was the idea of equality ever a far left ideal? McConnell, and other Republicans, revealed that in their John Birch libertarian mindset, equality is anathema to what it means to be American and to seize power to impose their brand of fascism on the nation, they will rig elections, provoke outrage against the legally elected President, and enlist malcontents through fear-mongering to enact corporatist policies regardless the will of the voters.

Republicans have fallen out of favor with the electorate because of their preference for the wealthy and their far-right extremist positions on issues meant to deprive every American of their constitutionally guaranteed equal rights. As they continue losing support from the people and become irrelevant as a political party, they are becoming more extreme and not unlike a dictator losing power striking out at their enemies and the population. Yesterday Speaker of the House John Boehner told an audience the President wants to “annihilate” the Republican Party, but the Republican Party is annihilating itself with one extremist position after another and none as despicable as rigging elections and working to prevent every American from “most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal,” because part and parcel of fascism is reserving equality for a privileged few elite; a particularly fascist Republican tenet of authoritarian rule.

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Filed under GOP Extremism, GOP Gerrymandering, GOP Hate-Mongering

Welcome to the new Civil War

Welcome to the new Civil War

In a recent discussion with a friend, I mentioned how news pundits constantly use the phrase: “Our country has not been so ideologically divided since the Civil War.”

My friend’s question was “why the Civil War analogy…?  The following piece tends to address this question.

Salon

Lincoln’s unfinished war rages on, as the neo-Confederacy tries to turn back the clock on women, gays, God and guns

On a repeat viewing of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” over the New Year’s holiday, a scene I had barely noticed the first time jumped out at me. Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens (played with reptilian gentility by Jackie Earle Haley), in a secret meeting aboard a steamboat with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward, faces up to the reality that the era of slavery has come to an end. Ratification of the 13th Amendment, Stephens muses, will destroy the basis of the Southern economy and the South’s traditional way of life. “We won’t know ourselves anymore,” he says.

If only it had been so. What an affluent slave owner like Stephens feared most, no doubt, was the utopian vision of “radical Reconstruction” imagined by legendary abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones in the movie), in an earlier conversation with Lincoln in the White House kitchen. Stevens envisioned a future in which all the land and property of the Southern aristocracy would be dispossessed and divided among the emancipated slaves, building a new society of free soil and free labor amid the ruins of tyranny. To put it in contemporary social-studies terms, Stevens hoped that by uprooting and destroying the South’s slave economy, one could also replace its culture.

It didn’t quite work out that way. You can’t boil one of the most tumultuous periods of American history down to one paragraph, but here goes: Lincoln was assassinated by a domestic terrorist and replaced by Andrew Johnson, who was an incompetent hothead and an unapologetic racist. Within a few years the ambitious project of Reconstruction  fell victim to a sustained insurgency led by the Ku Klux Klan and similar white militia groups. By the late 1870s white supremacist “Redeemers” controlled most local and state governments in the South, and by the 1890s Southern blacks had been disenfranchised and thrust into subservience positions by Jim Crow laws that were only slightly preferable to slavery.

So even though it’s a truism of American public discourse that the Civil War never ended, it’s also literally true. We’re still reaping the whirlwind from that long-ago conflict, and now we face a new Civil War, one focused on divisive political issues of the 21st century – most notably the rights and liberties of women and LGBT people – but rooted in toxic rhetoric and ideas inherited from the 19th century.

Edit Note:  Emphasis are mine

Continue reading here…

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, The Great American Divide

Jay Townsend, GOP Spokesman: ‘Let’s Hurl Some Acid At Those Female Democratic Senators’

Jay Townsend

These people are nuts!

The Huffington Post

A spokesman for Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) is facing criticism after advocating violence against female Democratic senators in a Facebook post.

Jay Townsend, the official campaign spokesman for the freshman representative, went on a vicious online rant on Saturday, which he began by taunting a constituent who voiced criticism about an earlier post on gas prices. “Listen to Tom. What a little bee he has in his bonnet. Buzz Buzz,” Townsend wrote.

“My question today… when is Tommy boy going to weigh in on all the Lilly Ledbetter hypocrites who claim to be fighting the War on Women? Let’s hurl some acid at those female democratic Senators who won’t abide the mandates they want to impose on the private sector.”

He attached a link to a Free Beacon article that claims female senators pay their male staffers more than their female staffers.

A moderator of the NY19 U.S. House of Representatives Civil Discussion Center page responded to Townsend, asking him to “please refrain from calling our members names.” The unnamed moderator also asked if Hayworth knew about his comments or whether he had “gone rogue.”

Comments from outraged constituents quickly followed. “‎’Hurl some acid’ Jay Townsend? Do you realize what that means?” wrote one person. “Acid attacks are particularly brutal, aimed almost solely at women, with the intent to maim and disfigure. I couldn’t imagine a worse piece of invective from someone who puts the Republican war on women in quotes.”

Another commenter: “Mr. Townsend, do you think we live in Afghanistan?”

Richard Becker, a Democrat running to challenge Hayworth this year, released a statement on Townsend’s incendiary comments.

Continue reading here…

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Filed under GOP Attack On Women's Rights, GOP Hate-Mongering

Fox analyst: Obama’s appearance on Fallon damaged the image of the presidency

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas. Screenshot via Youtube.

I’ve heard some variation of the above statement since the POTUS appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s show.   What I don’t understand is this:

Doesn’t it damage the office of the Presidency to insist that the President’s birth certificate is not authentic; to hurl personal attacks at President Obama on a daily basis, especially on Fox News.  Fox Nation, the online website of Fox News have maintained the most vile dialogue from readers, pertaining to President Obama; they try at every turn to denigrate the President‘s most significant accomplishments (Killing Osama Bin Laden and Health Care.)

How is it these people are so concerned about the office of the President’s image when they have been attempting to tear it down Barack Obama’s image even before he was elected?  When Mr. Obama was elected by a wide margin, they started doubling down on their personal attacks.

The Raw Story

Add syndicated conservative columnist Cal Thomas to the list of those upset over President Obama’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this week.

Thomas expressed his displeasure Saturday afternoon on Fox News Watch with Obama’s light-hearted appearance on the NBC late night show.

“There is a certain decorum about the presidency, I think,” Thomas complained. “When you take it on and lower it to that level, I think it does damage to the image of the office. It’s a distraction from the important stuff going on. The jobs and the economy, foreign policy issues.”

Thomas isn’t the first on Fox this week to criticize Obama’s appearance on Fallon. Gretchen Carlson bizarrely thought Wednesday that Obama’s decision to appear was “nutso.”

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz slammed Carlson for her comments later in the day.

WATCH: Video from Fox News, which was broadcast from April 28, 2012.

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, GOP Political Attacks, Rep. Allen West

Lauren Pierce, President Of College Republicans At Texas University: Obama Assassination ‘Tempting’

This is scary and absurd, all at once…

The Huffington Post

Lauren Pierce, the president of the College Republicans at UT Austin, said on Twitter Wednesday that the idea of assassinating President Barack Obama was “tempting.”

At approximately 2:30 p.m., Pierce posted, “Y’all as tempting as it may be, don’t shoot Obama. We need him to go down in history as the WORST president we’ve EVER had! #2012.”

The tweet came hours after police arrested a man for firing shots at the White House, leaving two bullets in the executive mansion.

Pierce joked that “it must be a slow news day” after ABC News posted a story on her comment:

Pierce told ABC News that the comment was a “joke” and that the “whole [shooting incident] was stupid.” Giggling, she said that an attempted assassination would “only make the situation worse.”"Insofar as she’s a representative [of the College Republicans], maybe it shouldn’t be said, but she’s made a positive statement in a way,” said Cassie Wright, the group’s vice president.

“I don’t really see anything wrong with it,” Wright added. “It’s just a personal comment, not representative of any group. Just freedom of speech, you know?”

Amid growing attention, Pierce removed the post and apologized on Twitter for her actions.

“It’s never funny to joke about such a serious matter,” she said. “I have learned a very valuable lesson.”

Lauren Pierce@laurenepierce 

Lauren Pierce
I apologize for my previous tweet. It was in poor taste and and should never have been written.
 
 
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Filed under GOP Cluelessness, GOP Hate-Mongering, GOP's Obama Derangement Syndrome, President Barack Obama

Attack Watch: Latest Made Up Thing For Conservatives To Whine About

As usual, Oliver Willis makes a great point here…

Oliver Willis

Conservatives seem pathologically incapable of attacking President Obama on real issues, even when they have legitimate gripes about him or his policies. Today’s example is the GOP bitchfest over the AttackWatch website.

The site is designed for Obama supporters to send in various pieces of misinformation, lies, etc. and then have them debunked. Obama ran a similar site in the 2008 campaign called Fight The Smears.

Simple, right?

Nooooo. Conservatives are now pretending as if this is an example of Big Brother. They now claim that a web form is on par with egregious violations of civil liberties. I mean, how dare Obama solicit links via e-mail????

Obama has been president for over 2.5 years now, and conservatives/Republicans have yet to attack him with anything that is actually real. Instead we’ve got one made-up thing after another, from “apology tour” to “death panel” to a supposed lack of exceptionalism from a President who regularly extols the exceptional values of America.

It’s all very childish and nonsensical of the right, but it is just what they do.

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GOP Rep. Steve King wants hearings on Obama’s ‘drunken uncle’

This is a bit confusing.  The GOP says we spend too much money on frivolities.  Wouldn’t a hearing on the POTUS’  half or one-quarter uncle’s drunk driving arrest fall in that category?

A better use of federal dollars would be to investigate the real reason Bush and Cheney lied to the American people about the Iraq war.  Not to mention all of the war crimes sanctioned by Bushco.

It seems our president has no skeletons in his closet, (none that can be verified) so the GOP has to stoop to this level to tarnish the office of the President of the United States just because he’s not “one of them”.

Raw Replay

House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is calling for President Barack Obama’s “drunken uncle” to testify before Congress.

Onyango Obama, who allegedly does not have a valid visa, was arrested in Framingham, Massachusetts, on August 24 and charged in Framingham District Court with operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol. He is the half-brother of President Obama’s father.

King suspects that Onyango Obama will get favorable deportation proceedings due to his relation to the president.

“We have to bring drunken ‘Uncle Omar’ in front of the House Judiciary Committee, drill down into this, and tell America what’s going on,” the Iowa Republican told Fox News’ Chris Stirewalt Monday.

“I watched as President Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, also evaded [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” King added. “The sympathy, the bleeding heart, of [Department of Homeland Security Director] Janet Napolitano decided to use an administrative authority to grant President Obama’s aunt asylum.”

Watch this video from Fox News’ Power Play, broadcast Sept. 12, 2011.

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, GOP Obstructionism, GOP Political Attacks, Rep. Steve King

GOP REP. LAMBORN: ASSOCIATING WITH OBAMA IS LIKE ‘TOUCHING A TAR BABY’

Ok, I’m not shocked any more at the vile, racist statements coming from the right-wing nutbags.  Here’s yet another example of the racist rhetoric being thrown around by these clowns…

Think Progress

Appearing on the Caplis and Silverman radio show last Friday, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) said, “Now I don’t even want to have to be associated with [Obama], it’s like touching a tar baby and you’re stuck, you’re part of the problem now. You can’t get away.”

The term “tar baby” is often considered a slur towards African Americans. Indeed, the term has such a derogatory history that the Oxford American dictionary revamped its definition to reflect the word’s racial undertones. If Lamborn wishes to cross-check, he should ask both then-Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — both of whom caught controversy for uttering the distasteful phrase.

Listen here:

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, Right Wing Vitriol

Texas Republican says it is ‘very insulting’ to use Spanish in his presence (Video)

Here we go again…

Raw Story

A man who gave testimony in Spanish before a Texas State Senate committee Monday was told by a Republican lawmaker that using his native tongue is “insulting” if he also knows how to speak English.

At about 2:17 into the video below, a man testifying against a controversial bill that seeks to ban so-called “sanctuary cities” by withholding state grant money is interrupted by state Sen. Chris Harris (R), who asks why the man is speaking in Spanish with the aid of a translator.

He responded in Spanish, and his translator said: “Spanish is his first language and since it’s his first time giving testimony he would rather do it in Spanish.”

“It’s insulting to us,” Harris snapped back, to voices of approval from the audience. “It’s very insulting, and it means if he knows English, he needs to be speaking in English.”

That’s when Sen. Kirk Watson (D) of Austin chimed in.

“Senators are also entitled to speak their personal point of view and may not be speaking for everybody else as well,” he said.

The man then continued his testimony in Spanish.

The next man to speak introduced himself by saying, “I had prepared my remarks in English, but I’ve chosen to do them in Spanish. Or in French, s’il vous plaît.”

This video is from the Texas Senate Transportation and Homeland Security committee, originally broadcast Monday, June 13, 2011.

 

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Filed under GOP Hate-Mongering, GOP Malfeasance