{"id":5100,"date":"2011-06-14T01:34:15","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T08:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5100"},"modified":"2011-06-14T01:34:15","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T08:34:15","slug":"last-night-at-the-looney-bin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/14\/last-night-at-the-looney-bin\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Night at the Looney Bin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, during the great Republican debate, I was doing something more important.  I was asleep. Nevertheless, I have gotten a pretty good idea of how it came down.  I would say that the debate was a tossup between Bachmann, appealing to the Theocon and InsaniTEA wings of the party, and Romney, appealing to the Neocon, Corporocon and Plutocon wings.  Pawlenty found himself backed into a corner when he refused to back up an earlier insult to Romney.  Nobody else mattered.  Here are a variety of other views.<\/font><\/p>\n

E. J. Dionne, Jr. had an interesting take on it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"14debate\"<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t expect to think that Michele Bachmann would be the big winner of tonight\u2019s Republican debate in New Hampshire, but that seemed the obvious conclusion. She was at ease and forceful without looking at all crazy or out-of-control. It\u2019s a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has moved that she didn\u2019t stand out for her extreme views<\/strong>. On this stage, suggesting we should just rid ourselves of the Environmental Protection Agency seemed par for the course.<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney did not lose anything tonight, which means that, since he leads in the polls in New Hampshire, he is a kind of winner. And on substance, his forceful defense of religious liberty was actually a high point. I agree with a view that is becoming widespread on the web – Chris Cillizza<\/a> and Jennifer Rubin<\/a> made this point in their winner-and-losers wrap-ups – that it was strange or timid for Tim Pawlenty not to be willing to back up his Sunday attack on \u201cObamneycare\u201d with any force tonight<\/strong>. Either you want to take that fight on or you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I thought Pawlenty did one important thing: He identified himself clearly as the working class Republican of the bunch (even if his economic ideas would not exactly be ideal for working class voters)<\/strong>. He made a very un-Republican comment on trade – \u201cI\u2019m for fair and open trade, but I\u2019m not for being stupid and I\u2019m not for being a chump\u201d – that probably endeared him to the Mike Huckabee populists<\/a> in the GOP\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

Here is the Democratic response from DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"14Debbie-Wasserman-Schultz\"Tonight\u2019s Republican debate was a reminder that we\u2019ve been down this road of failed economic policies and proposals before<\/strong>. The economic recession in America wasn\u2019t caused by bad luck; it was caused by bad Republican policies<\/strong>. But the Republican candidates are doubling down on the same flawed policies that led to the loss of 3.6 million jobs in the final months of 2008 and gravely affected middle class families across America<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

And if those policies weren’t bad enough, we heard support tonight for policies as extreme as ending Medicare<\/strong> and privatizing Social Security<\/strong> – policies the American people have rejected over and over again.<\/p>\n

The debate tonight put into stark relief the contrast between the Republican presidential candidates and President Obama. Republicans want to roll back the protections President Obama put in place to make sure another financial crisis of the magnitude we saw in 2008 could not happen again. President Obama is making the tough decisions to get our country going in the right direction, has taken our economy from job losses to 15 straight months of job gains, cut taxes 26 times, and focused like a laser on getting the middle class back on its feet while those campaigning to replace him have failed to show they can lead on these issues.<\/p>\n

Under Mitt Romney\u2019s leadership Massachusetts was 47th out of 50 states in job creation. And thanks to Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota was left with a $6.2 billion projected deficit<\/strong>. The fact is, when it comes to economic leadership, the Republicans have nothing to brag about. This isn\u2019t what the American people want. They want to see progress that works for them. Tonight we were reminded that Republican candidates have nothing to offer but the failed policies the American people have already rejected<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <DNC<\/a>><\/p>\n

Debbie was not the only Schultz with something to day.  <\/font>Ed Schultz calls the debate "all hat, no cattle" and discusses it with a panel of pundits.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

All the Republicans agreed on the need to take \u201cObamacare\u201d off business\u2019 back.  I actually agree that saddling businesses with health care costs puts US companies at a competitive disadvantage.  However Republicans propose RepubliCare.  You pay for insurance, you get sick, they drop you, nobody else will insure you, you die.  That\u2019s the RepubliCare death benefit.  The solution to this problem is single-payer health care, such as Medicare for all.<\/font><\/p>\n

The Republicans are still the party of NO: NO solutions, NO concern, NO integrity.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, during the great Republican debate, I was doing something more important.  I was asleep. Nevertheless, I have gotten a pretty good idea of how it came down.  I would say that the debate was a tossup between Bachmann, appealing to the Theocon and InsaniTEA wings of the party, and Romney, appealing to the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}