Tim Pawlenty Drops Out Of Presidential Race After Poor Showing In Ames

Tim Pawlenty has dropped his presidential bid after a poor showing in the Ames straw poll.  Making the republican presidential hopeful field one viable candidate short.  Pawlenty was only one of 3 candidates that could possibly beat Pres. Obama in 2012.

Unfortunately for Tim Pawlenty, he put too much resources in a straw poll that doesn’t really matter and a straw poll where substance on the issues isn’t valued by people who voted in Ames.  Also noting that Michelle Bachmann is from Iowa, he really didn’t stand a chance.

Pawlenty poured a million into trying to win this insignificant poll.  A poll only represents the far right of the republican party, not the (relatively) sensible sect of the GOP that would likely vote for him.  The sad part is that Tim Pawlenty was finally getting his mojo, taking on Michelle Bachmann and her little achievements (her only achievement being passing the light bulb bill).  Pawlenty could have been a moderate alternative to Mitt Romney who conservatives feel can’t trust.  He could have exposed more of Romney’s flaws and argue on the issues and substance of his “achievements”.

However, as a moderate democrat that sees nothing enticing about the GOP field that would make me change my vote from Pres. Obama, I’m quite content with Pawlenty’s decision.  That’s one less person that will make it hard for Pres. Obama to win another term.

Another thing to note is how this reflects on the republican party as a whole.  We have to think, did Pawlenty quit only because he came in a distant third in the Ames straw poll? No! It’s because of that, that he won’t be able to raise the money required to run his campaign.  Donors don’t believe in keeping relatively substantive candidates in the field.  Most only care about supporting the candidates that to the far right of the country.  The candidates that don’t have a chance of winning in a general election.  The GOP is kicking out the politicians that with some time could be stars within their party.

Video: Romney Gets Owned In Iowa, Then Says “Corporations are people”

Romney clearly can’t take the heat.  At the Iowa State Fair today Romney came up against a crowd of people who weren’t buying his typical republican talking points.  At one point he got into a war of words with an attendee who pressed him about strengthening programs like social security and Medicaid without taking away benefits.

The weird part about this is that after all the back and forth, he was still unable to answer the question thoughtfully.  He only answered by saying, “I’m not going to raise taxes”, then he went on about Obama and how he will raise taxes.  In the end, that’s not a valid answer, all he did was spew out a key republican talking point which isn’t even a practical answer when social security and Medicaid are only becoming more expensive programs to upkeep.  Romney’s solution must also be to keep printing off money and not raising the revenue.  I love how the crowd reaction of mostly republicans are to applaud like mindless fools whenever they hear “not raise taxes”.

The next clip of Romney at this Iowa State Fair tops the cake.  He literally said that “corporations are people”….here’s the clip.

What Romney said may be true to a fraction of a degree, but he is failing to once again understand where the attendees are coming from.  He said, “corporations are people” and went on to defend them, he doesn’t understand the issue with saying that.  Corporations pocket the money they earn (and rightfully so in my opinion) but a major portion goes to the top few including the huge bonuses and trickles down in very low wages to the thousands of workers.  That’s how the cookie crumbles in our society…I’m not saying that’s entirely wrong.  I support capitalism in our society, but it has flaws.

Saying corporations are people, is the same as saying Walmart or Target is one person that should have a say.  Maybe he truly believes and supports this since I’m sure he’s the top republican candidate that receives the most money from corporations.  Corporations have been controlling political decisions behind the scenes for decades through lobbyists and favors for politicians.  Only recently (especially since the Supreme Court decision) have they been coming out to lobby in the open.

Romney has to decide whether it’s his decision that a corporation should have the same privileges in our political system as a person.  Is it really fair that Target decides to send 10 million to X-candidate, the CEO of Target sends 7 million to X-candidate, while most of Target employees send $10 each to support  X-candidate?  Do you not think that if X-candidate wins, that Target and it’s CEO will have more influence than the employees about the direction of the country?

Romney needs to get real, address the issues, not use talking points that explain nothing, or once again he will fail as a candidate.

Scary, Michele Bachmann’s Newsweek Cover

Typically I try to stray away from making fun of people (not really), but this is a very awkward and scary cover.  I almost titled this post “Parental Advisory”…it would probably scare some kids.  Now technically this isn’t Bachmann’s fault, she’s not the photographer, and there might have been some pictures of her not looking crazy and scary.  But finding a picture like that in general of her is pretty rare, but the photographer should have tried to get a better shot. This is via, VillageVoice.

By the way, how is she the queen of rage?  Or maybe that’s why they chose this picture…to make her look scary and raging?

Axelrod Downgrades The Tea Party’s Rating To ‘Hurting America’

That is essentially what David Axelrod said about the Tea Party on CBS “Face the Nation” this morning, here’s the whole interview.

“We can debate the strength of the analysis that they did, the history of S&P and so on,” Axelrod told CBS’ Bob Schieffer, of Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency that downgraded the U.S. market from AAA to AA+ on Friday. “They made an egregious analytical error here but theirs was largely a political analysis… They want to see the kind of solution that the president has been fighting for… that will be balanced, that will include revenues, that will deal with some of our long-term issues.”

“For months, the president was saying, let’s get together, let’s compromise,” Axelrod continued. “We thought we had such an arrangement with the Speaker of the House… then he went back to his caucus; he had to yield to the most strident voices in his party. They played brinksmanship with the full faith and credit of the United States. This was the result in that.”

“The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,” he declared. “That clearly is on the backs of those who were willing to see the country default.”

I do find it odd that the Tea Party is in control of the entire republican party.  Unfortunately the way the republican party behaved is why we were downgraded.   They decided to play a political game with the nation’s debt ceiling and willing to let us default (which would have caused more debt).  The S&P’s reasons for the downgrade was not the debt ceiling itself, because we did raise the debt ceiling (albeit last minute).  The issue was the way Washington could not handle the issue in a productive civil way.  The bickering on the right and the political discourse was discouraging and gave little hope that America can even turn around our debt problem.

Howard Dean also appeared on Face the Nation.  This is via, Politico,

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says the tea party was “totally unreasonable” in the deficit-reduction debate and warns that Republicans are being held hostage.

“This is a tea party problem,” Dean said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They are totally unreasonable and doctrinaire and not founded in reality. I think they’ve been smoking some of that tea, not just drinking it.”

“This is ridiculous what’s going on here,” he said.

The firebrand Democrat and former Vermont governor said the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the nation’s credit is “a good thing” because it underscores the need to raise revenue to address the nation’s fiscal crisis.

But he said certain elements of the Republican Party make it impossible for reasonable people to do what Dean said is right — raising taxes on the wealthy.

“The American people are there; Democrats are there. A lot of reasonable Republicans are there,” he said. “But they are terrified of these right-wing splinter groups, the radical right, because they are so powerful in the primaries.”

His analysis is right on.  Essentially the downgrading by S&P will wake people up about what really needs to be done to reduce the deficit and that is by increasing revenue.  Unfortunately with the GOP running far right so they can win an election next year, isn’t going to help us fix this long term issue.  Maddow said this morning, phrasing the republicans’ unwillingness to compromise as ‘Republican Intransigence‘.  We have no one to thank but Speaker Boehner for setting the tone back in December for the way his party will behave when it comes to compromise…

GOP Too Slow To Compromise, US Credit Downgraded

For the past few months, the GOP has been slow to compromise about raising the debt ceiling.  Speaker Boehner was trying to please the Tea Party and help 2012 republican candidates look good-by acting tough and not agreeing to a deal fast enough.  With the need to get a deal in place before the deadline, the republican party essentially caused us to get a crappy debt ceiling/deficit cutting deal.  They wouldn’t agree to a debt ceiling without tax cuts for the wealthy and Wall St.  Now it’s ironic that those with the most investments will now be hurt by the GOP’s actions, because ….  Tonight, the S&P downgraded the US credit score from AAA to AA+.  Now the Obama Administration has to scramble to get our AAA back.  They have accused the S&P of calculation errors.  Via  TheHill,

The United States has suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating in history, as Standard & Poor’s has reduced the nation’s rating from AAA to AA+.

The credit rating firm said the recent plan to raise the debt limit while reducing the debt “falls short” of its expectations, but also offered broader condemnations of America’s political process.

“The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed,” the firm wrote in its announcement. “The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge.”

S&P said it was “pessimistic” about the ability of Congress and the White House to reach a broader plan to rein in the deficit “any time soon.”

The Treasury Department immediately pushed back against the downgrade by S&P, accusing the rater of having major calculation errors that threw the firm’s entire rationale into doubt.

“A judgment flawed by a $2 trillion error speaks for itself,” said a Treasury spokesperson.

After being presented with S&P’s economic rationale for the downgrade, Treasury officials immediately pointed out a perceived error in the analysis, which found it had pegged discretionary spending levels at $2 trillion too high, compared to analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. That calculation error resulted in a much higher growth rate of the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio.

S&P acknowledged the error, and removed that portion of the analysis from its statement

The agency blasted elected officials for failing to make the tough choices to get the fiscal picture in order, but refused to weigh in on the fundamental fight in Congress — whether increased revenues should be part of any deal to reduce the deficit.

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It doesn’t even matter if we can restore our AAA rating or not because of possible errors made by S&P.  The bigger and more longterm issue is that the political laziness of the republican party by their refusal to work towards a good compromise is hurting America’s standing.  Even before we were downgraded, leaders of other countries were blasting politicians for playing politics with the debt ceiling.

But no, Cantor and speaker Boehner just couldn’t tell the Tea Party no. I know the Tea Party probably has a hard time wrapping their heads around the implications of a credit downgrade, but that does not mean the rest of us have to suffer for their inadequacies.  I’d like to applaud the entire Republican Party for trying to protect lobbyists and Wall St. while throwing the rest of the US under the bus.  Can’t wait to see them try to spin this into being the fault of the democrats.  Yet, again, thinking most Americans are stupid to believe their political spin.