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| from foolocracy.com |
The cliche saying used to be 'there's money in them th'ar hills";
now it should be updated to there's money in them there fools -
the fact-averse, the not-living-in-objective-reality, the climate deniers and the creationists / intelligent design followers, and the people who go to fake museums to see fiberglass dinosaurs with saddles on them ridden by Adam and Noah.
Some people in political circles are wondering why R-money is making Donald Trump his new BFF. Trump will pander to anyone; he has no shame. He gave it up years ago, if he ever had any, along with any pretense of class.
It is not affection, it is not respect or shared political views that makes R-money and Trump bedfellows. It is expediency, money, and it is the numbers of fringies on the far right, all carefully calculated. Most of all, it is a lack of ethics in politicking by candidate Mitt R-money, pandering to the low information voter, the bigot voter, the hateful and stupid voter. In too many cases that is the tea party voter and other members of the conservative fringe.
Donald Trump is a 'surrogate'; he says what Romney doesn't or can't say to certain segments of voters, giving Mitt R-money deniability. Mitt doesn't wish to court the birthers directly, so he courts them indirectly. Outside the birthers, no one really takes Donnyboy seriously; but to birthers it is red meat and free beer.
Back in March during the primaries, before Santorum dropped out, he was trumping, as it were, R-money among the avowed birthers in this Public Policy Poll:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's press conference last week put the birther issue back in the news and our polling in these states finds that the birther contingent is still pretty strong within the Republican Party:Righties embarrassed by the considerable numbers of the numb and dumb among them try to downplay their numbers, but clearly they are trying, like the 'old south', to rise again, especially in the southern tier of states according to political developments just this past week.
-In Tennessee only 33% of GOP primary voters think Barack Obama was born in the United States, while 45% do not.
-In Georgia 40% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 38% do not.
-In Ohio 42% of Republican primary voters think Obama was born in the United States, while 37% do not.
If Romney ends up coming short on his late charge in Tennessee it may be due to his inability to compete with this fringe group. Among non-Birthers he trails Santorum only 34-33. But with the birther contingent he's in a distant third at 24% to Santorum's 35% and Gingrich's 32%.
The issue flared this week in Iowa, a closely watched electoral battleground, where the state GOP wrote a passage into its proposed party platform calling on presidential candidates to "show proof of being a natural-born citizen," beginning with the 2012 election.The President had resisted before a year ago releasing his long form birth certificate, noting that those who were birthers wouldn't believe it anyway. He was right, based on this poll at the beginning of the year:
Don Racheter, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party's platform committee, told Radio Iowa that the language was intentionally crafted as a "shot" at Obama.
"There are many Republicans who feel that Barack Obama is not a 'natural-born citizen' because his father was not an American when he was born and, therefore, feel that according to the Constitution he's not qualified to be president, should not have been allowed to be elected by the Electoral College or even nominated by the Democratic Party in 2008," Racheter said defiantly, even though the language may be tweaked at next month's Iowa GOP convention.
The right refuses to admit that they have a significant contingent of racist among their ranks, and the tea partiers have particularly tried hard to deny the evidence of their racism, both scientific and anecdotal, but it keeps growing stronger, and clearer. The Award Winning study in Delaware released in December 2011 made the strongest argument so far between birthers, tea partiers, Republicans and racism:These polls demonstrate that the power of Obama’s action was short lived. Two-thirds of the initial 12-point increase in the percentage of respondents who say that Obama was born in the United States has disappeared since last April.This trend is again especially pronounced among Republicans – the percentage of respondents who accept the Birther myth is, if anything, even higher than it was before Obama released his long-form certificate.
"Barack Obama was born in the United States": Republicans Only April 2011 January 2012 Before Release of Birth Certificate True 30% 47% 27% False 25% 23% 37% Not Sure 45% 29% 35% These results might be troubling, but they are not surprising. They are consistent with my previous work on the lasting power of rumors in the face of new information. As I, and others, have shown, rumors and innuendo are powerful forces in American politics – and they are hard to undo.*********
Early last month the Tea Partiers held a birther event in conjunction with the GOP in New Jersey, in Governor Chris Christie's own home district, appealing to the white racist red necks there. I don't think I missed ANY prominent GOP members in that state repudiating it either:The psychology student, Eric Hehman, recently received the national Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award for his paper detailing a research study he conducted on the subject. The article, “Evaluations of Presidential Performance: Race, Prejudice, and Perceptions of Americanism,” was published in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology....Hehman collected responses from about 300 white and black members of the UD community, asking them to evaluate the success in office of either Obama or Biden. "Our predictions were ultimately supported," Hehman said. "Whites who were racially prejudiced against blacks saw Obama as 'less American' and subsequently rated him as performing more poorly as president.
"Non-prejudiced whites, and both prejudiced and non-prejudiced blacks, did not do so. Additionally and importantly, this relationship was only found with Obama, and not in evaluations of Biden."
The thought is irresistible: is Trump set to be the Red Neck Czar of bigotry or maybe the Secretary of Republican Conspiracy Theories if R-money makes it into the White House?Last Tuesday, 400 Republicans were in Morristown to listen to Jerome Corsi — author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” — revisit his race-baiting, made-for-the-internet theory that Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he isn’t a natural-born U.S. citizen.
The fact that Obama released his Hawaiian birth certificate a year ago hasn’t stopped the tea party’s “birther” fringe from holding tight to its Kenyan fantasies. Tuesday’s shocker wasn’t the speaker; it was the guest list — including Morris County’s sheriff, a freeholder, a mayor and Assemblyman Anthony Bucco Jr. The shindig was sponsored by tea party groups and the Morris GOP.The Star-Ledger asked Bucco what he thought about Corsi’s traveling sideshow. “There were interesting points I wasn’t aware of,” he said, “and it made me believe this thing wasn’t going away.”* * * * * * * * * *
Morris Republican chairman John Sette was asked, too: “I personally have a philosophy of staying close to the tea party people. ... There’s lots of people who might have outlandish views in every spectrum in politics. We’re open to everybody and we believe in freedom of speech.”
Freedom of speech means Corsi can’t be punished for questioning Obama’s credentials. It doesn’t earn his conspiratorial nonsense an equal seat at the table.
Bucco and Sette aren’t faceless internet trolls. They’re real-life decision-makers. This is an embarrassment for Morris County’s ordinarily straight-laced GOP. Bucco writes laws, remember.
He can assure R-money that 'the blacks just love him'. I'm guessing that doesn't include any of dunce Donald's close personal friends. Dunce Donald can be the chief Fool, the chief Court Jester to the red state rednecks. They're gathering now. They're old, they're white; they like funny costumes and they're on the far right. Donald Trump wants to lead their parade right into the voting booths for R-money ---- and R-money is fine with that maneuver. I hope dearly that R-money will be challenged and pressed to repudiate both Trump and the birthers along the course of his campaign. It hasn't happened so far.
The mad hatters are really angry, they are old, white, fanatically conservative, ill informed, politically naive, and they have tasted power. They are not patriots, many of them are simply racist bigots who do not want their world to change, and who blame their problems not on the actual authors of their situations, but on minorities and liberals. Donald Trump wants to head their parade, and Mitt R-money wants THEIR money - and their votes. He has no morals. He has no ethics. And he may be one of the worst liars ever to run for office. This is Memorial Day weekend. This is not the land of freedom for all that our military died to preserve, if we let the free-dumbers win. What unites us are those things we have in common, including respect and loyalty for our nation but also the common decency and morality that bridges groups of people, evangelicals and atheists, Mormons and Muslims,, protestants and pagans -- ALL. Instead of dividing us, our differences should be celebrated as part of our individuality, not the basis for fear and hatred and rivalry. What characterizes the right is not the qualities of birth or identity like gender, race or ethnicity, or sexual orientation. What characterizes them are the qualities they have chosen, and that is what makes them fair game for criticism for promoting hatred and fear of those THEY see as other. We are 'us', we are U.S., every bit as much as they are despite their attempts to wrap themselves in faux patriotism. Hatred is NOT patriotic; fear is not patriotic. Suppressing voting by as many legitimate voters as possible is NOT patriotic. Corporate welfare and eliminating help to individuals in need is not patriotic, and it is not beneficial to the nation. Moderate is not a bad word, and socialism as they use it is not really socialism and not bad either. Every nation that has a better standing economically, socially, educationally, medically is a mixed economy, and a mixed form of representative government which includes what the right wrongly identifies as socialism.
It is representative government, government for and by people not corporations, that makes us free, in this country and anywhere else in the world. We do not celebrate Memorial Day because our citizens and others who fought for this nation died for capitalism, corruption, or draconian gaps in wealth and income equality. Those people died for a way of life that treats people fairly, not inequitably; they died for opportunity, and that freedom AND opportunity is disappearing under the politics of the right.We need to repudiate the birthers, we need to repudiate the racism of the Tea Party and the GOP. We need to repudiate their fears of gays, immigrants, women and minorities, and we need to oppose, emphatically, the right wing war on these groups.That is honoring our war dead, that is honoring the core principles of this nation. That is not Mitt R-money, the GOP, the Tea Party, or any of the conspiracy theorists or other tea bag or tinfoil hat wearers on the right.*********************An unrelated afterthought - given how much lip service the right gave to the importance of Sarah Palin's few months as governor and her job as mayor of a one-horse town as legitimate credentials that made her more qualified than Obama to sit in the top job chair.......isn't it amazing that R-money is NOT in any way shape form or location touting his performance as a governor of a much larger state, for a full term? Why do you think that is? Could it be because he did a really bad job?At least Palin and Biden's children served in our armed forces, in combat zones. Regardless of their respective politics, hats off to the members of their family who served, and for their families' sacrifice worrying for them during that period, with loud cheers.R-money's pampered stay at home mom with four housekeepers boarding school kids? So far as I can find out, not R-money, not one son. What love of country is that again?
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