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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMichael Tomasky, Daily Beast: Running From Romney: the GOP’s Phony New Compassion
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/18/running-from-romney-the-gop-s-phony-new-compassion.htmlWhen someone in any social cohort decides to act like Ebenezer Scrooge, its easy and quite natural for everyone else to fall into the role of Bob Cratchit. This is what several Republicans are now doing in reaction to Mitt Romneys remarks about Barack Obama and his gifts to his core constituencies. But Republicans allegedly competing for the loyalties of the 100 percent is a movie weve seen. It doesnt work, and it doesnt work for a straightforward reason: free-market solutions to many of the problems faced by the 47 percent simply dont exist. The GOP has no answer to these problems, and it really doesnt want to have any. But, boy oh boy, are we about to enter a galling period of hearing them pretend otherwise.
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If the entire Republican Party were made up of nothing but David Frums and David Brookses, maybe well-designed and good-faith market-based attempts to address some of these problems could have a chance. But the actually existing Republican Party is more accurately represented by another DavidVitter, the Louisiana senatorwho dismissed S-CHIP as Hillarycare.
And its Vitter rather than the other Davids who typifies the party because that is how the partys voting base wants it. The darkly amusing thing about all this distancing from Romney is that in truth, all he was doing was expressing the views of the overwhelming majority of the partys conservative base, which rose up in a mighty rage in 2009 against these moochers and their gifts.
I wish Jindal and the rest of them luck, in spite of it all. If theyre sincere and serious, well have a very different Republican Party five years from now from the one weve known. In the meantime, permit me my skepticism. They dont have good solutions to working peoples problems because the record shows that at bottom, they dont really want to solve them.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)who cast a ballot did so for Romney, when logic says he should have pulled in at most 10-15% of an informed and engaged electorate. As long as Rape-publi-scum can get 48% with a racist and misogynist platform, they will not change. They may pay lip service to tolerance but they will remain at heart a party based on intolerance.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)If Jindal is "sincere and serious"?
Why would anybody think Jindal is sincere unless they have been living under a rock for the last decade?
Has Tomasky perhaps forgotten little Bobby's response to Obama's very first State of the Union?
Here's a clue and a reminder.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/101
Notice Bobby was singing the same song back in 2009.
"Governor Jindal says that the Republican Party has lost the trust of the American people and is determined to regain it."
Yet it was pretty clear to me, blindingly obvious, in fact, that Bobby was NOT either sincere or serious. He was, instead, selling the same old GOP snake oil. As I continued
That's great news, but if I might suggest a first step towards regaining that trust - STOP LYING.
"In that regard, Jindal's speech is not a good first step. Let me just look at a few of Governor Jindal's lies. First, he touted the Republican alternative to Obama's stimulus. He said it was a tax cut for low income working people and that it would cost less than the Democratic plan and create more jobs. Yet there are sound economic reasons to not believe in this trickle down theory. Here's the analysis of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities."
If Jindal is serious and sincere, then I am the king of Siam.
How about the Daily Beast trying to hold him accountable instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt that he clearly does not deserve?