In this week’s edition of Peggy Through the Looking Glass, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan pegs President Obama as the “Not-So-Smooth Operator.”
Something’s happening to President Obama’s relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, “Nothing new there,” but actually I think there is. I’m referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
It’s not due to the election, and it’s not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn’t happening.
What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it’s his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it’s a big fault.
It’s all about the contraception issue, Noonan says, regarding which Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on all righteous religious people. Which, she says, is typical of Obama, who will exit the White House (soon or later) blaming Republicans for not working with him.
He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O’Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.
An American president has to make cooperation happen.
But we’ve strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.
Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.
And at this point in a Peggy Noodnik column the hardworking staff usually laughs.
The rape allegations against Joseph Carter, the commander of the Massachusetts National Guard, are all over the news media right now, but here’s what the hardworking staff is wondering:
Why did this Boston Globe front-page piece fail to credit local CBS affiliate WBZ for unearthing the story, given WBZ’s claim in this piece?
BOSTON (CBS) – It’s an allegation of rape uncovered by the I-Team against the top leader of the Massachusetts National Guard.
Adjutant General Joseph Carter denies that he raped Susan Pelletier, who was a young soldier under his command back in 1984.
Carter denies even knowing her, but according to documents obtained by the I-Team, during a 2010 court martial proceeding Colonel Mark Murray testified that he was told that when Joe Carter was first questioned about this in the 80′s he said, “Well I hope this doesn’t impact me some time in my future.”
Once around the PAC, James, and don’t spare the horses.
Item: Paul Ryan Hearts Mitt Romney
First there was the Democratic National Committee’s web video highlighting the man-love between Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R-You Got My Good Side?) and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (R-They’re All My Good Side).
DNC POUNCES: Afterthe House passed Ryan’s budget yesterday and as Romney heads to Wisconsin today, the DNC is releasing a memo and a new web video to highlight the Romney-Ryan “bro-mance.” The video, titled “That’s Amore,” and the memo from DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse describe their ideas as extreme and accuse them of wanting to end Medicare as we know it to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and corporations. Read Brad’s three-page memo: http://bit.ly/HraZen. Watch the 80-second video:http://bit.ly/HwspTr.
Video:
Then on Friday, Ryan officially endorsed Romney. Via the New York Times:
The endorsement from Mr. Ryan comes four days before the Wisconsin primary, a contest in which Mr. Romney is trying to solidify his dominance over Rick Santorum. Mr. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and a rising leader in the Republican Party, planned to remain neutral in the contest, but he said voters in his southern Wisconsin district were looking for guidance as to whom they should support when voting here on Tuesday.
“I can’t walk 20 yards down the aisle of the grocery store without someone saying, ‘Who should I vote for in the primary?’” Mr. Ryan said, adding that he made his decision because Mr. Romney had a better grasp of the deep fiscal burden facing the country.
A Republican Party Internet advertisement altered the audio of U.S. Supreme Court (1000L) oral arguments in an attack on President Barack Obama’s health-care law.
In a web ad circulated this week, the Republican National Committee excerpts the opening seconds of the March 27 presentation by Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. In the ad, he is heard struggling for words and twice stopping to drink water.
“Obamacare,” the ad concludes, in words shown against a photograph of the high court. “It’s a tough sell.”
A review of a transcript and recordings of those moments shows that Verrilli took a sip of water just once, paused for a much briefer period and completed his thought — rather than stuttering and trailing off as heard in the edited version.
The ad marks a blurring of the line between the law and politics, in which the nation’s highest court — and the justices and lawyers who decide and argue cases — are becoming fodder for Republicans’ and Democrats’ arguments over the validity of the president’s signature domestic legislative achievement.
Put another way: It really doesn’t get lamer than that.
The American Energy Alliance — a group with reported ties to the conservative Koch Brothers — has launched a $3 million-plus TV ad campaign hitting President Obama on higher gas prices.
The campaign — at a buy of $3.2 million — will air in Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia from March 30 through April 12, according to NBC’s ad-tracking data.
EXCLUSIVE – CROSSROADS CAPITALIZES ON HOT MIC INCIDENT: Theconservative outside group American Crossroads weighs in on President Obama’s hot mic moment with an 80-second web video that warns “America can’t afford the risk” of a second term. The made-to-be funny and sure-to-go-viral video is a faux James Bond trailer with a British woman’s voice instructing Obama that he has a top secret mission to win reelection, “weaken our defenses and fundamentally transform the world.” Dimitry Medvedev stars as “Dr. Transmitkov,” and a shirtless Vladimir Putin is featured. Watch: http://bit.ly/H14f6j.
Now comes presumptive Democratic Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren with her own Etch A Kvetch web video:
Text:
What the lobbyists want, what Wall Street wants, is they want Etch A Sketch Senators. They want the ones who will clear the screen and change their minds to do whatever big money tells them to do. That’s what they want.
Talking by conference call with thousands of Wisconsin voters Wednesday, Mitt Romney told them he had a humorous connection to their state.
But it didn’t take long for “funny anecdote” to become “campaign fodder.”
GOP presidential wannabe Romney told a story about his father George “[shutting] down a Michigan factory and [moving] the work to Wisconsin.”
“Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan, and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign,” explained Romney, who described a subsequent campaign parade in which the school band marching with his father knew how to play Wisconsin’s fight song, but not Michigan’s.
“Every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.
Ha-ha! Closing factories is always good for a yuck.
Especially when the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future (And Screw Everyone Else’s) is running a misleading TV spot in Wisconsin whacking Rick Santorum for supposedly not caring about the unemployment rate:
That’s typical of the Romneyites’ smashmouth politics, not to mention ignoring Romney’s own dismal record of job creation as Massachusetts governor.
In other words, politics as usual.
(MSNBC’s Morning Joe take here. TechPresident’s Romney Twitter fail here.)
During World War II, Korean comfort women served as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. For the past few years the surviving women have been fighting for compensation in a series of newspaper ads.
Here’s one from 2007:
And here’s yesterday’s New York Times full-page ad:
From the copy:
Since January 1992, ex-comfort women have been continuously meeting outside of the Japanese embassy in downtown Seoul every Wednesday. While there are only a handful of surviving comfort women, gradually the number of supporters attending the meetings has grown to over 1,000.
The Japanese government, however, has never expressed any of direct compensation or pubic [sic – or maybe not] apology to the women for its atrocities.
“ROMNIACS,” the name for Romney Super Fans, get profiled by Dave Fahrenthold in today’s Washington Post. Florida dateline: http://wapo.st/HklNGm.
The WaPo piece’s headline:
Mitt’s ‘Romniacs’ united by an uncommon passion for the Republican hopeful
“Uncommon” is an understatement.
Nut graf(s):
The good news for Romney is that they exist, these people who call him a “geek,” and “Ward Cleaver,” and love him deeply for it.
The bad news is that there doesn’t appear to be that many of them — a small, eclectic scattering in a nation with 137 million registered voters.
“We are in the thousands,” said Judi Rustin, 61, the poet in Arizona. “And we all bleed red Romney blood.”
That’s actually more than Romney himself does. Not to mention his anemic favorability numbers.
According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, “Romney’s seen favorably by 62 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of conservatives overall, including 54 percent of strong conservatives.”
But . . .
Romney’s negative rating among independents, at 52 percent, is a new high for him in this group.
To summarize:
There are more Romni-icks out there than Romniacs.
Massachusetts Democrats Launch Grassroots Effort to Educate Voters About Scott Brown’s Support for Big Oil
Grassroots vols set to flyer gas stations in Boston and Worcester today
Scott Brown supports Big Oil and Big Oil supports Scott Brown
BOSTON–With the U.S. Senate set to vote tomorrow on ending billions of dollars worth of taxpayer giveaways to Big Oil, the Massachusetts Democratic Party is reaching out to educate voters about Scott Brown’s record of supporting Big Oil.
Groups of grassroots volunteers will kick of the grassroots effort by handing out flyers at gas stations in Boston and Worcester TODAY, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 at 4:30 PM
The flyers note Scott Brown voted against a similar measure that would have ended the sweetheart deal for some of the world’s most profitable companies last year.
“In this election year, Scott Brown may try to have an Etch A Sketch moment and vote the other way, but voters in Massachusetts will know that Scott Brown supports Big Oil and Big Oil supports Scott Brown,” said Massachusetts Democratic Party Executive Director Clare Kelly. “Massachusetts families deserve a senator who stands up for them, not one who does the bidding of Big Oil.”
The oil and gas industry has filled Scott Brown’s campaign coffers with over $198,000 and earlier this week, Big Oil’s lobbying arm launched an ad campaign in Massachusetts to support Scott Brown.
Question: How much did those flyers cost? And does this violate the People’s Pledge between Brown and his likely challenger in the fall, Elizabeth Warren, whereby the candidate who profits from third-party ads pays a penalty to the charity of the other’s choice?
Well the Missus and I trundled down to Suffolk University’s C. Walsh Theatre last night to catch the Ford Hall Forum‘s tribute to Saturday Night Live writer James Downey and it was swell.
From FHF’s website:
James Downey has been a writer for Saturday Night Live for over three decades, putting his hilarious words in the mouths of countless comedic actors. Year after year, he has provided material for a show that continues to define popular culture, and no political figure has escaped his rapier wit. Notably, Downey’s consistent commentary on current events holds a mirror up to America, allowing life to respond to his art as much as vice versa. His work is a tribute not just to American culture itself, but also to the value of freely expressing sentiment that may not always be welcome but is certainly necessary. As the Ford Hall Forum at Suffolk University presents Downey with our coveted First Amendment Award, his friend, actor Bill Murray, moderates the discussion on his career of political satire and the many truths told in jest.
Actually, Murray didn’t so much moderate as meander: He and Downey freely admitted that they had planned to map out the evening on the drive from New York to Boston, but spent most of their time listening to the music Downey brought along.
Leading indicator #1:
Murray moved the lectern four times in response to an audience complaint “We can’t see you!”
Leading indicator #2:
After showing some SNL clips, Downey conceded “This concludes the organized portion” of the evening.
No problem – the rest of the event was a free-form free-flowing delight.
Murray was relentlessly funny in a low-key sort of way, and Downey was a popcorn machine of amusing anecdotes – from being fired in the late ’90s (“because my boss [Don Ohlmeyer] was a douchebag”) over his O.J. Simpson jokes on Weekend Update, to dead-on impersonations of Rodney Dangerfield, whose professional reincarnation was jet-fueled by SNL.
Murray added an anecdote about a creative meeting he had with Dangerfield in a sauna that was downright side-splitting.
None of this resembled what was predicted in a Sunday Boston Globe exchange with Downey:
Q. What can the audience expect from you and Bill Murray on Tuesday?
A. We’re talking about maybe performing a piece together. Doing a reading of a piece written for John Belushi. . . . Or a piece written for Paris Hilton when she hosted the show and she refused to do the piece the night of the show. She threw a tantrum and locked herself in her dressing room and would not come out. She was allowed to get away with that. We didn’t do the piece. Joey Buttafuoco, who was going to be in the piece with her, was part of the issue, I guess. . . . I’m going to show one [filmed] piece that I’m determined to show that was cut from a dress rehearsal. It will be like a world premiere. A John Kerry piece. . . . Basically, he’s just obsessed with ending prenuptial agreements. Our audience did not really understand the background. Or maybe they did and didn’t find it was funny.
None of that happened but the Kerry piece, which was moderately funny, the way most things Kerry are.
During the obligatory Q&A waterboarding, Murray face-washed a questioner who spewed some film-theory gobbledygook about manipulating American icons to influence American cultural consciousness, and threw candy at other inquisitors.
Downey, when asked about the ongoing status of SNL, said it’s not just a show, it’s more like a college now. “No one says Princeton? Is that still going now? Wasn’t that like the 1840s?”
Comcast recorded the whole thing and will offer it On Demand (not sure when).
But whenever – make sure to check it out. It’ll be worth your while.
MASSACHUSETTS SENATE – BROWN TO WRITE 2ND CHECK UNDER AD DEAL: “Sen. Scott Brown has agreed to write a second check to charity after the American Petroleum Institute ran an ad urging Brown to oppose legislation,” the Associated Press reports. “The oil and gas industry’s main lobbying group ran radio and print ads asking voters to call Brown and urge him to oppose legislation which they said would raise taxes on energy producers. Brown’s campaign said he’s committed to honoring an agreement he signed with Warren designed to keep third party ads out of the Senate campaign. Under the agreement, the candidate who benefits from the ad must write a check for half the cost of the ad campaign to a charity named by the other candidate. Warren’s campaign said the ad reflects Brown’s past support for tax breaks for big oil companies.” http://bit.ly/GQsh13
Something’s happening to President Obama’s relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, “Nothing new there,” but actually I think there is. I’m referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
Campaign Outsider 