The Smithian

June 6th, 2012

'Just in case Mitt Romney was too focused on battling Rick Perry and Rick Santorum to have noticed, President Obama offered a reminder on Friday of some of the things that he proposed—and House Republicans blocked. Things like putting teachers, cops, and firefighters back on the job to combat the bleed of jobs from state and local governments. Things like putting construction workers back to work rebuilding roads, bridges and airports. Things like helping small businesses hire workers and boost income. Things like allowing homeowners to refinance to take advantage of lower rates. Things, in short, that would boost the economy and create jobs. And things that House Republicans refused to pass. If Mitt Romney really wanted economic growth, he'd be asking why Congress hasn't done more with President Obama's plan. Instead, he's pretending that Obama never offered it.'

March 29th, 2012

thesmithian

'...In February, after embarrassing himself by saying he was “not concerned about the very poor,” Mitt Romney explained that the government’s safety net would take care of them, and he promised to repair any holes in the net. That promise didn’t last very long. On Thursday, House Republicans approved, on a party-line vote, a disastrous new budget that would leave millions of struggling families desperate for food, shelter and health care — and Mr. Romney has embraced it...“It’s an excellent piece of work,” Mr. Romney said. (Rick Santorum said it didn’t cut enough.) The biggest of the cuts would be to Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that is already gasping for money in many states that put a low priority on health care for low-income people.'

March 27th, 2012

thesmithian

Ask yourself how we suddenly know that the dead kid had been suspended from high school because he got caught with a bag that might once have contained marijuana. Ask yourself why we know that. We know that because this case is Not About Race. It is Not About Race because It Is Never About Race. Race is the past. Black people can vote. One of them is president. Nothing Is About Race anymore. Just ask Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum…and they’ll tell you that the president “injected” race into the tragedy. It wasn’t there before the president — who is (shhh!) black, you know — put it there. Ask Joe Oliver, this “friend” of the gunman who insists that Zimmerman might have said “fucking goons” and not “fucking coons,” because the latter is an obsolete racial slur and the former is a “term of endearment,” according to Oliver’s daughter. This is enormously believable because, if you’re an armed 28-year old gunslinger in pursuit of what you believe is a dangerous burglar, the first descriptive that would leap to anyone’s mind is a term of endearment used by high-school girls. Yeah, sure. Whatever. As if. And it is enormously believable because This Is Not About Race.

Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire.

March 27th, 2012

thesmithian

The imperatives of campaigning lead candidates to spin out the most disastrous scenarios and apocalyptic warnings. And there’s no doubt that some people believe them; you wouldn’t have to interview too many Republican voters to find a few who sincerely believe that if Barack Obama is re-elected, within a few months freedom will disappear, Christianity will be outlawed, everyone’s guns will be confiscated, and so on.

more, on Rick Santorum’s “Obamaville.”

March 18th, 2012

thesmithian

'...a theme that has become known to the public largely through the Gingrich/Santorum bloc: that Barack Obama has led the most actively anti-Christian administration in American history. This is a talking point with a lot of traction across the airwaves and blogosphere of the right. Given Obama’s frequent Christian testimony—explicit enough to make most founding fathers uncomfortable with its public expression of private matters—how can this view be so widely held?'

March 8th, 2012

thesmithian

'The fact that Rick Santorum—a candidate whose radically conservative views on women, gays, and the division of church and state are not so different from those of, say, the Taliban—could get this far should be a wake-up call to mainstream Republicans, if there are any left. To win a GOP primary these days, it seems you need to be one of two things: a true-believer cultural extremist like Santorum or someone willing to say whatever it takes to trick primary voters into thinking you're a cultural extremist, as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have attempted to do.'

March 5th, 2012

thesmithian

Zoom

March 2nd, 2012

thesmithian

Romney and Rick Santorum…are conservatives…Neither, however, seems likely to be elected. … If either is nominated, conservatives should vote for him. But…there would come a point when…conservatives turn their energies to a goal much more attainable than…electing Romney or Santorum president. It is the goal of retaining control of the House and winning control of the Senate…conservatives this year should have as their primary goal making sure Republicans wield all the gavels in Congress in 2013…If Republicans do, their committee majorities will serve as fine-mesh filters, removing President Obama’s initiatives from the stream of legislation…a re-elected Obama…would have a substantially reduced capacity to do harm…The presidency is not everything, and there will be another election in the next year divisible by four.

George Will, from a preview of his forthcoming column.

February 27th, 2012

thesmithian

…it is not social conservatism, as lazy pundits call it. It is a radical theocratically-based attack on modern liberal democracy; and on modernity as a whole. It would conserve nothing. It would require massive social upheaval, for example, to criminalize all abortion or keep all gay couples from having any publicly acknowledged rights or status. Then think of trying to get women back out of the workplace or contraception banned—natural, logical steps from this way of thinking.

Andrew Sullivan on Santorum.

February 24th, 2012

thesmithian

‘…Seems pretty obvious that for all of Santorum’s imputations of hidden agendas and infernal motives to Barack Obama, he’s engaged in a not-so-hidden agenda…

…based on a Christian Nationalist “worldview” that is, after all, hardly novel in conservative politics these days. Those of us who are contemplating the possibility of this man becoming President of the United States have a choice of willfully ignoring his “worldview” and blandly reporting the “message” he wants to send to voters who are not initiates in his very special way of understanding American history and current events—or taking Santorum seriously enough to think he says what he means and means what he says. But he cannot have it both ways…

more. and more.