Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 7, 2009, at 6:35 am
The summer recess of Congress has sent politicians back home into their districts and straight into the guerilla theater that has overcome reasonable discussion about how to reform the nation’s broken health care system.
Witness: Hundreds of angry conservatives and anti-Obamacare people (a few violent) turned up at a town hall organized by state Rep. Betty Reed in Ybor City last night with one mission in mind — some with one mission in mind: disrupt the forum and get headlines.
They succeeded.
Driven by right-wing media nutz such as Rush Limbaugh (who mentioned Kathy Castor’ appearance at the forum during his Thursday radio show, bemoaning that she would be surrounded by “union goons”), the state and local GOP and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 movement, the anti-Obama crowd banged on windows and doors in an attempt to get into the overcrowded Children’s Board meeting room.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 2, 2009, at 11:37 am
FreedomWorks Foundation is putting together a Tea Party of Tampa’s own, for April 15, after a similar protest of the bailout and government spending drew 4,000 in Orlando. I’ve talked with one politico who plans on being there and he said he was told to expect 5,000-10,000 people at the twin rallies at noon and 5 p.m. in downtown Tampa’s Gaslight Park.
Here’s the details from FreedomWorks, plus a Tea Party video after the jump:
More than a dozen of the GOP’s most conservative members on Thursday introduced a bill to reauthorize controversial PATRIOT Act provisions set to expire later this year.
The group of House Republicans – who include Whip Eric Cantor (Va.), Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) and Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith (Texas) – want to extend for an additional 10 years the ability of national security agencies to conduct “roving” wiretaps, have access to library patron information and greatly expand the reach of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Those provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire this year.
Because without the ability to know that I checked out “The Devil We Know” by Bob Baer from the Jan Platt Library, the terrorists win.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 10, 2009, at 8:07 am
Tired of the whole New World Order thing, smarting from losses at elections locally and nationally, scared shitless of “socialism” and thoroughly pissed at the man living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the wingers needed a new conspiracy-theory-fueled cause, and it looks like they have it: Declare your state as sovereign from the federal guvmint “and we want to be treated as such.”
Here’s a Washington lawmaker who introduced one of these meaningless sovereignty resolutions in state legislatures.
Best part? The radio yakfest host intoning, “I feel like I woke up in Stalinist Russia.” Oh, that and the coda in which an old song intones “run rabbit, run” and says the farmer is getting his gun as a picture of Barack Obama fills the screen. Nothing like a call to assassinate the president among right-wing friends, huh?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 24, 2009, at 7:36 am
As President Obama preps for his first address to a joint session of Congress tonight at 9 p.m., the punditocracy is going wild with predictions and desires of what he will/should say. He’s catching heat for being a doomsayer so far instead of the hopeful candidate whose pop art depiction graced untold Hope posters. This is a tough speech for him: he must be hopeful and realistic at the same time. He must explain how his borrowing trillions of dollars from the Chinese squares with his desire to cut deficit spending. He has to roll out an austere budget proposal yet still pad it with social programs and safety-net spending that his party demands.
President Obama is benefiting from remarkably high levels of optimism and confidence among Americans about his leadership, providing him with substantial political clout as he confronts the nation’s economic challenges and opposition from nearly all Republicans in Congress, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
A majority of people surveyed in both parties said Mr. Obama was striving to work in a bipartisan way, but most faulted Republicans for their response to the president, saying the party had objected to the $787 billion economic stimulus plan for political reasons. Most said Mr. Obama should pursue the priorities he campaigned on, the poll found, rather than seek middle ground with Republicans.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Dec. 1, 2008, at 4:30 pm
The body of his brother’s presidency is not even cold yet and Jeb Bush is (practically) off and running for the 2012 nomination, giving one of his (increasingly less) rare interviews, this time with the right-wing online Newsmax.com in which he sets out the direction he believes the GOP should take:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tells Newsmax that the GOP must broaden its appeal to avoid becoming “the old white-guy party,” and recommends that Republicans create a “shadow government” to engage Democrats on important issues as the incoming Obama administration seeks to enact its agenda.
Bush also said Barack Obama’s election was neither “transformational” nor a landslide, pointing to the huge advantage in fundraising that Obama enjoyed. And Bush had this warning for Republicans looking for a new direction:
Bush urged Republicans not to abandon their core conservative principles in favor of a “Democratic-lite” agenda. Still, the GOP does need to do some real soul-searching, he said.
“If you take the [last] two election cycles, there’s real cause for concern, no question about it,” he said.
There is good news for Republicans, Bush said: The United States remains “basically a center-right country.” He cited President-elect Barack Obama’s stance on taxes as an example.
“Who would have thought the so-called liberal candidate would be the one advocating tax cuts, and attacking the Republican candidate for tax hikes — which wasn’t true, but was effective when you consider he was outspending Sen. McCain by five to one.”
Oh, and be a little more tolerant, he adds:
“We can’t ignore large segments of our population and expect to win,” Bush said. “We can’t be the ‘old white-guy’ party. It’s just not going to work, the demographics go against us in that regard.
“Among Hispanic voters, I think we need to change the tone of the conversation as it relates to immigration. In Florida, we’ve not participated much in the chest pounding and the yelling and the screaming. I mean, it just drives me nuts when there are substantive policy differences that we can show mutual respect on, but the tone needs to change. And I think we need to recruit more candidates who share our values in the Hispanic community. In Florida we’ve done that.”
Jeb!’s education reform think-tank, Foundation for Florida’s Future, quickly shared excerpts of the article with an e-mail blast.
And how good is that hard-charging “journalism” at Newsmax? Here’s the only mention of the fact that Jeb! could be looking to add a third Bush to the presidential rolls: “who frequently is mentioned as a top-tier GOP presidential prospect.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Nov. 5, 2008, at 2:54 pm
Just a sample of Tampa Bay and Florida conservatives with their reaction to last night’s Obama victory.
From Chris Ingram, a former Capitol Hill staffer and Republican consultant in Tampa:
Get Ready for Obamalism
I want to puke, but at least HRC isn’t the president-elect.
My friends, George W. Bush has left our Republican Party in disarray. Make no mistake, John McCain ran a lousy campaign, but McCain could have run a lousy campaign and won had it not been for the pathetic eight years of the Bush presidency. Bush I believe will go down in modern history as our worst president — even worse than Carter.
Despite being outspent by hundreds of millions of dollars, and taking bad advice by a bunch of (Bush) people who never had his interest at heart, John McCain’s numbers on Election Night were actually respectable. Had George W. Bush been on the ballot for re-election to a third term, I’m not sure he would have even carried Texas. McCain for his part put up a good fight and managed to win enough states to show this wasn’t a clear mandate on Obamalism. But in the long run, McCain was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or as my friend and noted political scientist Darryl Paulson likes to say, George W. Bush defeated John McCain not once, but twice.
So where do we go from here? I can tell you one thing, as sick as I am that Barack Obama (a man with no experience leading anything other than a bunch of little old ladies as a community organizer), is our next president, I am thankful every time I get ready to puke about that fact, that it is not Hillary “Rob’em” Clinton who is our president-elect. Yeah, Obama sucks. He’s a socialist. He cavorts with terrorists. He has no spine. He’s untested. He has no record. But he’s not a Clinton.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 18, 2007, at 4:45 pm
Two leading Republican candidates in a struggle over which one is more conservative on the issue of stem-cell research.
In one corner is John McCain, the former maverick turned uninteresting grouch whose campaign is distributing video clips of one of his rivals appearing to accept some levels of embryonic stem cell funding and research. McCain’s campaign is understandably nervous, because the war hero senator is dropping like a rock in polling and can’t survive the imminent arrival of the Rear Admiral (Fred Thompson).
In the other corner is serial position-changer Mitt Romney, who has won many social conservative hearts and minds despite previous stances that were less-than-conservative. In this case, according to the NYT, McCain doesn’t appear to have the goods on Romney; the video has enough wiggle room in it for Romney’s campaign to make the argument that he hasn’t changed in his opposition to destroying fetuses to enable stem cell research.
Of course, it is not even part of the battle that both men’s positions are out of the mainstream for the nation as a whole. But then again, this isn’t about the nation as a whole; it’s about winning the Republican primary. Plenty of time to “nuance” a position in the General Election.
