Brent Budowsky Posts
How Bill de Blasio Lifts the Progressive Movement
The election of Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City creates a powerful opportunity to turn the core vision of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as the core teachings of Pope Francis about economic justice, into the daily workings of city government in the global center of media and finance.
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The Obstruction of Justice in Congress Must End
May 29, 2013 - 2:30pm
Nothing is more important in America than the rule of law. Nothing is more important for the rule of law and American justice than filling the inexcusably large number of judicial vacancies. Nothing is more important for governance in America than the President and the Senate working to end the obstruction, gridlock and abuse of filibusters that is destroying the credibility and efficacy of the United States Senate.
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Bipartisan Blame in Benghazi Turns to Clinton, GOP Spending Cuts
May 8, 2013 - 8:00pm
Perhaps during his next partisan exploitation of the tragic death of Americans at Benghazi, Libya, in political hearings paid for by American taxpayers, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) can replay then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warning him, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and other Republicans that their efforts to cut diplomatic security spending will endanger American lives.
As Welch said to McCarthy: Have they no shame? It will be a test of the integrity and professionalism of the media to watch whether Issa and Chaffetz are asked to apologize for their efforts to cut diplomatic spending every time they parade before the cameras in their partisan shtick.
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TX, Congress Go Blue If Immigration Reform Goes Down
April 29, 2013 - 11:40am
If Republicans sabotage immigration reform, Texas Democrats may not have to wait for a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016. Some leaders of the conservative movement and talk radio are mounting a campaign to defeat or destroy the immigration bill, acting in a way that suggests what some Republicans have called “the party of stupid.”
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Bipartisan National Security Tradition Upheld by Kerry, Hagel and Shinseki
January 17, 2013 - 6:00pm
The prospect of a Secretary of State Kerry, Secretary of Defense Hagel and Gen. Eric Shinseki as secretary of Veterans Affairs would bring to the Cabinet extraordinary war experience, combat heroism and support for troops and military families that would inform all military, diplomatic and veterans-related decisions by the president.
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Bubba and the Boss Go Buckeye
Brent Budowsky
It will be the greatest show on earth, and just might win the state of Ohio and a second term for President Obama. On Thursday the staggeringly popular former president, who is known as the Comeback Kid, will appear in Ohio to talk abo...
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Bill, Not Big Bird, to the Rescue
Brent Budowsky
If Mitt Romney’s pandering attack on public broadcasting was the latest example of the weathervane who will say anything to get elected, Barack Obama’s condescending new negative ad is the latest exa...
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Why Democrats Are Winning
Brent Budowsky
Here are important polling numbers:The most popular political leaders in America are Bill and Hillary Clinton. Their approval rating of nearly 70 percent suggests a nation that is more center-left than conservativ...
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GOP Brand Disaster, Republican Reverse-Rorschach
Brent Budowsky
Mitt Romney and Republicans are in big trouble because the Republican brand has become disastrously unpopular. Romney is not the cause, he is the symptom.
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Why Romney Is Losing
History may well record that Barack Obama and Democrats won the 2012 elections, and Mitt Romney and Republicans lost the 2012 elections, in the period that began with Bill Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention and ended with the leak of Mitt Romney’s private speech to wealthy donors during which he insulted giant swaths of the American electorate.
The Clinton speech validated President Obama as having improved the catastrophic economy he inherited because it was given by the only living former president identified by a large majority of voters as having brought about a great and fondly remembered era of American prosperity.
The leaked Romney video was a major and potentially epochal blunder because it reinforced the pre-existing condition of Romney and Republicans being viewed by voters as favoring elites and feeling contempt for large masses of voters. In the most profound political sense the Romney video created a reverse Rorschach,” by which I mean this:
In a straight Rorschach, a candidate says things that convince widely disparate voters that he is really speaking for them. In the reverse-Rorschach, the candidate says things that convince widely disparate voters that he is really insulting and demeaning them, which is what happened with the Romney video. It was not a gaffe, because Romney believes the words he said. It was a catastrophic blunder, because voters learned in stark and widely repellent terms what Romney (and many Republicans) actually believe.
Some commentators are only now figuring out now that Romney is alienating many white men. But even in my columns championing Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, supporting pay equity and criticizing Republican attacks on the interests of women, I always emphasized that the interests of men and women are mostly aligned on the matters I wrote about.
When Newt Gingrich, and now Mitt Romney, attack the “food-stamp president,” they believe they are dog-whistling an insult that applies to them, i.e., minorities. They fail to understand that there are poor white males, and jobless white males, who are protected from dying of starvation by programs such as food stamps.
When Mitt Romney insults what he calls 47 percent of the nation whom he claims to be dependents who enjoy being victimized, and whom he implies are freeloading on government programs, the number of those the elite and out-of-touch Romney actually insults in his reverse-Rorschach is more like 60 or 70 percent. To wit:
American farmers have a complex relationship with government programs, especially those designed to help them through hard times or recognize the unique complexities of their business, which does so much to feed the nation.
There is political harm to the GOP when Republicans in Washington attack and obstruct the farm bill, especially with such great pain from the drought in the heartland, while Romney expresses contempt for those he implies are freeloading, which reasonable farmers might conclude Romney believes includes them.
American seniors benefit from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It does the GOP great political harm when they see Republicans in Washington attack these programs. When Romney accuses masses of voters of being freeloaders and deadbeats, many reasonable seniors conclude: “He means me.” Ditto veterans, whom I wrote last week are heroes, not dependents. Ditto those on auto assembly lines, whom Obama and Democrats rescued, despite Republican contempt.
Workers (men as well as women, whites as well as minorities) who would build the roads, bridges and schools that Obama and Democrats would build, over Republican objection, might reasonably conclude that Romney includes them in his declarations of derision toward those he considers deadbeats on government programs he proudly despises, including those that would give them jobs.
And so: A campaign that had been locked at even for many months has changed to advantage-Obama. Democratic Senate candidates have begun to surge. The odds of Democrats gaining more seats in the House have risen and, if the trend continues, Democratic control of the House is increasingly plausible. Why?
The Clinton bounce was followed by the Romney fall, which now infects the Republican brand at all levels. The reverse-Rorschach of the Romney video is hurting Republicans across the board. Maybe the debates will change this. Maybe not.
Romney is losing because he now embodies an attitude of demeaning, derision and disrespect that poisons Republicans today in ways that Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and William F. Buckley would never have accepted.
Opponents become enemies. Government itself becomes evil. Citizens become deadbeats. Patriots become dependents when they disagree with Republicans. Fact-checkers are ridiculed. Science becomes Satan.
Romney is losing because he pandered to the wrong people, and his party is paying the price. Mitt Romney in his video created the largest enemies list in the history of American politics. He is losing because he has convinced a majority of voters that they are on it.
Brent Budowsky
The Hill
Published: Wednesday, 26 September 2012
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GOP Hopes USA Fails
White House photo: Pete Souza
While most Americans were celebrating the birth of a nation of patriots, the Republican nominee for president, who made much of his fortune sending American prosperity abroad and sheltering much of his wealth in offshore tax shelters, and Republican leaders in Washington, who would make the practice of firing teachers and police the policy of the state, eagerly await Friday’s jobs report they fervently hope will be bad for America.
Mitt Romney is in trouble. The American people do not like him or trust him. They intuitively sense that he’s not on their side. They are right. He is not. And it shows.
While the stampeding herd of the media were dramatically overstating the problems of the president, informing the nation about celebrity divorces rather than demanding that the Republican nominee stop hiding his tax returns for reasons that are obvious, Romney was failing to win the trust of the nation.
In the latest big lie of the far right, while the president was honoring American heroes at home on the Fourth of July, the right invented the fiction that the president was campaigning in France. Since the answer to the big lie is the big truth:
It is time to talk of patriotism and partisanship and a Republican Party that has lost its heart, its soul and its way. Ronald Reagan would be embarrassed by Republicans today. William F. Buckley would be angry and ashamed. The party of Reaganite optimism is now the party that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.
The Republican Party is now led by a man who insults his own father, a great man who believed the people have a right to know about those who would lead them. George Romney disclosed many years of his tax returns because he was proud of what he did, unlike Mitt Romney, who is not.
Mitt Romney says George Romney was wrong. The American people believe George Romney was right. I applaud Vanity Fair for doing what journalists should do, investigating the facts of the Romney finance. I cannot yet vouch for the accuracy of their findings, but I applaud their work.
And now, the jobs report arrives. Today the ADP report was better than expected, disappointing Republicans who hope for joblessness and cheer-lead for America to fail. We shall see about the big jobs report tomorrow. This much is clear:
Never in the history of the republic has any great party been so passionately hopeful that America would fail as Republicans are today.
Never in the history of the nation has any great party dreaded good news for America the way Republicans do today.
Never in the history of America has any great party so callously and falsely blamed Americans who are jobless for being jobless, blamed Americans who are poor for being poor, blamed Americans who are hungry for being hungry or blamed Americans who are hurting for their hurt as Republicans do today.
Never in the history of the Congress has any leader done what the Republican Senate leader did, boasting that his great dream for America was not putting Americans to work, but politically destroying the president.
While then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) passed job-creating legislation in the Democratic House, Senate Republicans abused the filibuster even more than the bigot senators of the old segregated South in their drive to make America fail. Senate Republicans destroy America’s hope for jobs with the same ferocity of their leader’s hyper-partisan ambition to destroy the president.
Never in the history of the nation has any great party been led by a man who praises his own wealth with such conceit and claims this as his qualification for the presidency. Even leading Republicans have called him a vulture.
The party of Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan is now the party of “no” that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.
Brent Budowsky
The Hill
Posted: Friday, 6 July 2012
GOP Hopes USA Fails is a post from: LA Progressive
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