Political Wire points to the latest cover story from Time
Republicans in the Wilderness: Is the Party Over? “As the party has shrunk to its base, it has catered even more to its base’s biases, insisting that the New Deal made the Depression worse, carbon emissions are fine for the environment and tax cuts actually boost revenues -- even though the vast majority of historians, scientists and economists disagree. The RNC is about to vote on a kindergartenish resolution to change the name of its opponent to the Democrat Socialist Party. This plays well with hard-core culture warriors and tea-party activists convinced that a dictator-President is plotting to seize their guns, choose their doctors and put ACORN in charge of the Census, but it ultimately produces even more shrinkage, which gives the base even more influence -- and the death spiral continues.”
Historians, scientists and economists...... Ha! All LIBERALS!!!!!
Or so says the Republican Party’s “base” today, the ones that party leaders are pandering to.
And this headline that has been on CNN for the past two days really struck me --
Colin Powell comment angers LimbaughLike, WHO cares what Rush Limbaugh thinks??? Here you have a former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who is one of the most admired men in America and CNN is running a headline like anyone should care that a rightwing radio blowhard didn’t like something he had to say???
But then one has to remember that Rush Limbaugh is now the defacto leader of the Republican Party and so his efforts to drum people like Powell and Olympia Snowe out of the party is newsworthy under the circumstances.
But if this goes on for too much longer, the Republican Party will be so small and insignificant that it won’t matter even then.
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The San Antonio Express-News had
a good editorial this weekend criticizing Gov. Rick Perry’s boneheaded decision to reappoint Don McLeroy as chairman of the Texas State Board of Education. McLeroy is
a certifiable nutcase who believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible — the Earth is thousands of years old and not millions, he says — and uses his position on the SBOE to tout creationist nonsense and to undercut the public education system in favor of homeschooling at every opportunity.
The fact that Perry appointed this rightwing nutjob to the chairmanship in the first place is bad enough, but now he wants to extend his term as chairman through 2011. Fortunately, there seems to be some resistance to this move in the Texas Legislature. But I would also remind the Express-News editorial writers that they are once again being hypocritical on this matter since they were the ones who endorsed Perry for governor everytime he has run for office. Perhaps they are setting themselves up to endorse Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary next year, but I’m not convinced that she would have been any better. Hutchison just cast a vote against Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius becoming Secretary of Health and Human Services simply to appease the Religious Right because they oppose anyone who doesn’t favor criminalizing abortion.
I am greatly offended that Perry thinks so poorly of our public education system that he would promote this fox in the henhouse as chairman of the SBOE, which oversees textbooks in our schools. I only wish that the vast majority of Texans who support public education would see this as the betrayal that it is and vote to cast Perry out of office next year.
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You saw it here first!
Back in 2005, I
recommended on my blog that President Bush tap
Federal Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Sotomayor is considered to be a moderate and was first appointed to the bench by Bush’s father. And it would have given him the distinction of appointing the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court.
To his great detriment, Bush did not heed my advice and instead chose yet another far-right wing Antonin Scalia clone for the court vacancy. He did this to try and please the extremist, looney-tune, right-wing whacko-base of his party, which today accounts for 99.999999 percent of the GOP. And what did that ultimately get him? Nada. Today he is still spat on by the wingnuts and dismissed as a “liberal” because they can never accept the reality that their nutjob political ideas, which Bush faithfully executed, DON’T WORK!
But anyhow, it now appears that President Obama will have the opportunity to pick up where Bush missed the boat and nominate Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. She is currently being
touted as a front-runner for the nomination.In case you missed it, the sudden talk of Supreme Court nominations was prompted by
Justice David Souter’s surprise announcement that he will step down after the current court term. Even though Souter was appointed by Bush the Elder, he is considered to be part of the moderate-liberal wing of the court today. Replacing him with Sotomayor would change the ethnic and gender makeup of the court more than it would shift the court ideologically. But that won’t matter to the nutjobs on the far-right who will gear up for a huge wild-eyed hissy fit as soon as Obama makes his pick known.
That is why it is a good thing that the Democrats will likely have their 60-vote majority in the Senate by the time this nomination comes up for consideration. There is no point in trying to make bi-partisan concessions with an extremist minority party that has no interest in governing the country. Obama should just concentrate on picking the best qualified people and then moving forward with the other important business that he has to deal with (i.e. continuing to work on fixing the huge mess that the Republicans left him with.)
There is a good chance that Souter won’t be the only court appointment Obama will get to make. Justice John Paul Stevens is almost 90 years old and Ruth Bader Ginsburg has some major health issues she is dealing with. But even if Obama gets to replace all three of them it still would not shift the court from its current right-wing bent because all of them are from the moderate-liberal side. But hopefully Obama will take the opportunity to pick at least one justice who can serve as the intellectual leader of the court on the left, much the way that Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan used to do and the way that Antonin Scalia currently does for the rightwing majority on the court.
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