Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kirk get to worry about their health; rest of us have to worry about a lot more
In the limited conversation on health care reform in 2009, one of the simpler suggestions was for all Americans to get the same health care coverage that Congressmen and Senators enjoy. “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for all.”
Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kirk may not agree on much politically, but both understand that they have a really good health care situation.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) resigned from Congress this week, just over a year after being shot in the head at point-blank range in an assassination attempt. Giffords voted only once after being shot, in dramatic fashion, she cast a vote to raise the debt ceiling because the vote was close.
Those in Congress who are ill are given generous amounts of the benefit of the doubt. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who suffered a stroke and missed most of 2007 in recovery, is one of countless stories where our elected officials got to keep their job while recovering.
Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) will discover that soon enough. Kirk suffered a stroke this week, and will have a significant recovery ahead of him. Kirk doesn’t have to worry about his job security. His staff will cover helping citizens while he recovers.
Senators have a distinct advantage over representatives when it comes to illness. Kirk’s next election isn’t until 2016, so he has plenty of time. Giffords’ resignation came on the heels of whether she could run again for her seat in November. As miraculous as her recovery has been, Giffords was in no shape to run for her seat.
Resigning now allows for a special election to fill the remaining term of her 8th Congressional District. Confusing matters is that the districts are being redrawn, and the new 2nd Congressional District is pretty much the people currently in AZ-8.
Giffords could have stayed in the seat until January 2013, but thought it was best to resign now.
President Barack Obama and his challenger(s) will be talking health care throughout the 2012 presidential race. The challenge for the president and his administration is defending Obamacare when millions of Americans haven’t had a chance to enjoy it, and the other side wants to take that way before it can help those who need help.
In the real world, if you get shot or suffer a stroke, you have more to worry about than your health. Keeping your job and the cost of health care are two crucial concerns beyond the obvious health issues. Those elected in Congress don’t have those worries, and we don’t want to change that part of the equation. In fact, we want to join them.
Stephen Colbert finished ahead of Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman in South Carolina, but MSM doesn’t care
2012 South Carolina GOP primary
| Candidate | Votes | % of total |
| Herman Cain | 6,324 | 1.1 |
| Rick Perry | 2,494 | 0.4 |
| Jon Huntsman | 1,161 | 0.2 |
| Michele Bachmann | 494 | 0.1 |
| Gary Johnson | 213 | 0.0 |
If you stayed home on a Saturday night to watch the South Carolina coverage, you heard a lot about the top 4 finishers. Though for the one millionth time, Ron Paul got asked (by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer) which of the other candidates he likes best. Ron Paul get asked this question because the MSM loves to pat him on the head like he’s a child wearing a tie or a grown-up dress. To Wolf Blitzer and any other overpriced MSM person: if you want to ask Ron Paul that question, ask it to all the other candidates first and see what their reaction is to your stupid lame question.
What the MSM left out of the conversation was how Stephen Colbert, er, Herman Cain did on Saturday night. True, if you only get 1.1% of the vote, you won’t get much attention. But South Carolina is an unique scenario in the last two election cycles thanks to Stephen Colbert.
The MSM is massively confused by what Colbert does. They don’t even see it as being worthy to be a distraction. Diane Sawyer, reading the story of Colbert’s exploratory committee, had the same look as your dog after someone farts. When Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner, the MSM went out of their way not to mention what Colbert did or even his existence. That attitude hasn’t really improved.
Colbert runs for, as he puts it, president of the United States of South Carolina. His attempt is never terribly seriously since he would try to get himself on the ballot. So even during all of what happened, everyone involved knew Colbert couldn’t get on the ballot, and South Carolina rules don’t allow write-in candidates.
Colbert caught a break in 2012 as Herman Cain’s name was on the ballot but had dropped out of the race. Cain’s campaign seemed slightly more legitimate than Colbert’s, yet the MSM gave him much more credit than he deserved. As difficult as it is to believe that a United States state doesn’t accept write-in candidates for the highest office, someone who leaves the race over 45 days before the election can’t be removed.
Herman Cain got 6,324 votes in the South Carolina primary. While that number sounds low, Cain had more votes than Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman (both active when the week began), Michele Bachmann, and Gary Johnson combined.
Even if you think that Colbert was responsible for 80% of Cain’s total, a really conservative estimate, 80% of Cain’s total is still more than the other 4 candidates combined.
Naysayers would note that Colbert was scoring 5% in a South Carolina poll, just before Huntsman dropped out of the race, and only got 1.1% in the election.
Established candidates with staffs and campaigns that just withdrew from the race days before the election did poorly than a late-night comedy show host under a nom de plume that ran a campaign for a week. Colbert didn’t hit the ground in South Carolina until the day before the election, and still outdrew 4 presidential candidates.
The Colbert/Cain rally was described by seasoned political reporters as larger than rallies of major presidential contenders. The idea that people are frustrated with the avalanche of Super PAC ads and that a random billionaire has more power than actual voters is foreign to the MSM. Colbert recognizes this and so does his audience. Colbert’s Super PAC (with Jon Stewart in control) have run spot-on ads criticizing the dependence on money.
We assume that people who run comedy shows are trying to be funny. Colbert and his staff want you to laugh, but his audience is smart enough to know there is a message behind the humor. They are pulling the curtain to expose the madness of millionaires and billionaires who are not “coordinating” with each other.
The Colbert Report has done more to show people the significance of Citizens United on the presidential race. We criticize the MSM as being highly lazy. All we ask is that they watch the Colbert Report Monday-Thursday nights at 11:30 pm Eastern, take notes, and report what you see. MSM people: if you can follow what Colbert is doing, you will be so much smarter.
South Carolina notebook: Candidates rushing to leap rather than be pushed out of the race
We knew that some of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates would be practically eliminated after South Carolina. Two of them jumped before they were pushed.
– Jon Huntsman’s timing was bad because it looked like he dropped out as he realized he would lose to Stephen Colbert. Huntsman endorsed Mitt Romney, which seemed sad since most independents, if they had to vote for a Mormon former governor with great hair, would have picked Huntsman over Romney.
– Rick Perry’s timing was bad because it looked like he dropped out as he realized he would have to debate one more time. Perry endorsed Newt Gingrich, which seemed sad since if the coin had come up tails, Rick Santorum would have had the endorsement. Perry likes coins because they offer only two options; he never remembers the third option for some reason.
– Herman Cain’s timing was great because it looked smarter for staying out. Cain endorsed Colbert’s bid to campaign under his name, which seemed sad since Colbert is a better candidate as a fake candidate than Cain was as a real candidate.
– Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich combined would represent a serious threat to Mitt Romney. Not quite in a Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton kind of race, but the tightest race the Republicans have had since, well, William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt. The problem is even though they are vested and experienced politicians, while they know they are splitting the conservative vote, neither of them can get the other one to leave. Santorum’s Iowa win, now confirmed, would give him that momentum, but Gingrich’s loudness overshadows Santorum’s attempts to get noticed. After all, Santorum didn’t have an ex-wife on “Nightline” this week. Gingrich should be thankful it was only one.
– Gingrich got a partial standing ovation for confronting John King on asking the question about an open marriage in Thursday’s debate. As offended as Gingrich appeared to be, he had to love the question so he could react the way he did. As for Gingrich, when you protest that way, we assume your ex-wife’s charge is true.
Gingrich puts his marriages on the record because he preaches family values, the “sanctity of marriage,” and his hypocrisy during the Clinton years. So he shouldn’t pretend to be miffed.
If politicians really could admit what they’re thinking, especially GOP politicians, wouldn’t it have been great for Gingrich to say, “Yeah, I wanted a open marriage. What does that have to do with running the country and getting the economy back on track.” The problem for Gingrich and other “holier-than-thous” is that they would have to admit that family values and “sanctity of marriage” have nothing to do with running the country.
– If you had to name the two most consistent GOP presidential candidates besides Mitt Romney, Rick Perry is the most obvious choice for finishing consistently bad and saying really horrible things but Ron Paul has had two solid finishes and is looking for a third in South Carolina. This isn’t to say that Ron Paul will win or should win. The MSM’s curious coverage of Ron Paul lends itself to conspiracy theories from people who aren’t normally paranoid. The voters have spoken in Iowa and New Hampshire, and later today in South Carolina; the MSM should start listening. If you are running for president and score as high as Ron Paul does, attention should be paid to you. If not, then you aren’t doing your job.
– We would like to welcome back Keith Olbermann to anchor coverage of the South Carolina primary tonight on Current TV. Coverage gets underway at 6:30 pm Eastern and runs 90 minutes. The coverage resumes at 9:30 pm Eastern for another 90 minutes. You might remember that Olbermann sat out coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Building a news operation takes time; even within that, Current TV has been off to a bad start. The graphics issues and lighting problems are real, and Olbermann has every right to be concerned about the professional approach of the cable channel. Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks, Jennifer Granholm, and former Vice President Al Gore, head of Current TV, has done a pretty good job, though their coverage has been sidetracked at times, especially when you want results. I drifted back to MSNBC at times. It does help that MSNBC is in HD and Current TV isn’t, but Rachel Maddow was focused. Olbermann had that potential to keep the focus; Olbermann has done a lot more anchoring than everyone in this paragraph combined. The best solution would be to combine the two approaches into one, but it looks like everyone we’ve seen so far in coverage won’t be there tonight.
Mitt Romney: voters don’t want a president who enjoys firing people
“I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.” — Mitt Romney
Most of us don’t have the power to fire someone. We might know what it is like to be fired (downsized/let go/terminated/laid-off), but no, we haven’t had that luxury.
Mitt Romney knows what it’s like to fire people, and because of his mass earnings, made in part from firing people, hasn’t had the financial pressure that comes from being fired.
When regular people get fired, panic sets in. “How am I going to pay my bills?” “What is my identity without a job?” And of course, in the United States, “what am I going to do for health insurance?”
See when you fire someone, you may not be able to do much for their problems, but you should have a sense of what goes through the minds of the people you are firing. Empathy. Does Romney have empathy?
Did Romney have empathy for his family dog in 1983 as he strapped the dog carrier to the top of the car?
Did Romney and his Bain Capital buddies consider alternatives to firing as many people as they did?
Mitt Romney complains that his quote is taken out of context, a difficult task to imagine given that Romney already took a quote from Barack Obama and didn’t mention that Obama was quoting John McCain in 2008. So let’s put Romney’s quote in context.
We have all been the subject of bad service, whether that be in a restaurant, on a bus, at the grocery store. Even in the worst of days and the worst of moods, regular people rarely root for someone to get fired. Not because we are kind, but we have been there. Regular people know what being fired is like, and we wouldn’t wish that. And if somehow we did wish for that, we still wouldn’t do it with glee.
Romney sees bad service as a reason to fire someone. Not take their business elsewhere, but actually fire someone. In the context, Romney wants us to be able to fire our health insurance company. But we can’t fire our health insurance company, even if we want to do so.
If they mess up, we have to keep them. We can’t go anywhere. Obamacare will help somewhat with that, but keeping the 1800-pound elephant that is the insurance system means it won’t go away, even if we are dissatisfied.
We don’t want to “fire” our insurance company; we want them to do a better job. That is the difference between regular people and Mitt Romney; regular people want to work with what they have to be better. They lack the power that Romney has to fire them.
Single-payer would have allowed us to get rid of our insurance companies, but we know that even under single-payer, insurance companies would still exist and they would try to sell us supplemental policies. With the basics covered, people would have the freedom to shop around and be able to switch companies if their needs weren’t getting met. But we still wouldn’t be firing them.
People joke that they would like to fire their Congressman. Chances are they want to fire someone else’s Congressman, since incumbent retention is still rather high. In the voting booth, you still are voting for someone else, not firing your Congressman.
Mitt Romney would like to fire Barack Obama and be the next president of the United States. No matter if Obama wins or Romney or another Republican or Ron Paul becomes the next president, people are going to worry about being fired. Who do you want for a president when you think you might be fired? Someone who likes firing people?
Romney did say at one point he was worried about getting a pink slip himself. When pressed for details, Romney didn’t have any. The voters might not be happy with a candidate who has never had to struggle, but one who lies about struggling when they haven’t won’t survive for long.
New Hampshire is best time for conservative GOP candidates to rise to the top
Yawn! Mitt Romney will win New Hampshire. We won’t even have to stay up that late to find out who won and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Yes, Romney will likely win New Hampshire. Not because he is a jamming, awesome candidate, but because Romney hasn’t suffered as much from “foot-in-mouth” disease (not a pre-existing condition under Romneycare, er, Obamacare).
Sen. Rick Santorum gets some momentum, and how does he spend it? Telling us that we shouldn’t use the term “middle-class” and how that builds a class system. The Republicans have spent the last 30 years trying to get rid of the middle class; some Democratic politician have piled on, but the GOP did start the fire.
We got proof that just because you have money doesn’t mean you’re smart: one of Newt Gingrich’s benefactors gave his PAC $5 million — now. Why now? Because Gingrich is finally in it? Gingrich’s best chance was Iowa. As much love as he has for Santorum, he sees Santorum’s virtual win as one he should have had.
Giving Gingrich $5 million at this point won’t get Gingrich the nomination, but it could add to his fuel against Romney. Gingrich had better get that fire going. If Romney wins New Hampshire by a substantial margin, the MSM won’t have much to say about anyone else.
Santorum says a shrinking middle-class isn’t the problem; it’s calling them middle-class. Gingrich identified himself as not rich, though he has a net worth of over $6 million. Gingrich isn’t Romney-rich, but he is better off that more than 99% of the rest of us. This is who you want to lead in an economy still racked by unemployment and housing crises.
Rick Perry is doing his best Rudy Giuliani impression. Giuliani figured if he didn’t campaign in the early states, people would forget the crazy stuff he might have said. Perry seems much more normal this week, but only because we haven’t heard from him. Michele Bachmann beats him as sounding more normal, only because we won’t hear from her starting tomorrow from South Carolina.
For all the pundits who deride Romney for not exceeding 25%, the other 75% really has no idea who or what they want. They stare at the menu, as if the menu will change, insisting on a steak in a vegetarian restaurant. In the meantime, Romney is cruising along.
We have said little about Jon Huntsman, who feels like he is in a time warp. Mocking Iowa might get a few applause points, but if you want to be president, you get to be president of more than New Hampshire. Quite frankly, the world knows more about Huntsman’s adult daughters than in anything he has done or said.
While very rich candidates such as Gingrich and Romney have thinly disguised PACs trashing the other candidate, Ron Paul said he couldn’t do anything about his supporters running ads questioning Huntsman because his two young daughters are adopted from Asia. You can’t coordinate, but you can denounce. Pulling out the sleazy John McCain’s “fathering of a black baby” trick before the race gets to South Carolina is going even more backward than the horrible incident of 2000, and we didn’t think it could get worse.
One of Gingrich’s lines about Romney is that he is a “career politician.” Romney’s argument against that idea is mostly semantics. But everyone, including Romney, knows the former Massachusetts governor has been running for president in 2012 since he ran for president in 2008. The conservatives have had to decide which candidate they want to rally around. The “king of the hill” game the Republicans played throughout the summer and fall of 2010 proved that they couldn’t get serious about doing so.
Mitt Romney will likely win New Hampshire, but that doesn’t mean the race is his to win. The upcoming Southern states will help the conservative candidate, whomever that may be. But the GOP could have 7 straight Southern primaries, and they won’t help unless someone can step up. Until — if — a conservative candidate steps up, Romney may not be on fire in GOP minds, but he is warmer than the rest of the GOP field.
Michele Bachmann got opportunity to run for president without focus on gender
Someday, a woman will be president of the United States. Numerous political experts think the first female president will be a Republican. Regardless of party or how she got there, one person she will thank is Michele Bachmann.
She will also thank Geraldine Ferraro, Pat Schroder, Carol Moseley Braun, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and many other female political role models. The one thing that Bachmann was able to do was run a presidential campaign, rise and fall, on the merits of what she said and what she did and not because of her gender.
Bachmann did win the Ames straw poll, the pinnacle of her campaign. Bachmann did say some crazy things, like repeat without thought or consideration a remark she says she heard from someone about how the HPV vaccine causes “retardation.”
If she had been a stronger candidate, you might have seen stories about her husband, Marcus, trying to live up to the First Lady image. Then again from what we saw, he might have enjoyed that part of the job.
All of those things weren’t judged on Bachmann being a female candidate, just a candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012.
Of course, Katie Couric didn’t get a chance to do a major interview with Bachmann. This definitely helped Bachmann avoid any derogatory questions.
Let’s be clear: Bachmann didn’t necessarily do anything major to hold this position in history. But she didn’t anything negative, ala Sarah Palin.
Bachmann’s announcement after the Iowa caucus means her run for the presidency is over in 2012. But that door to a female president got a little wider … thanks to Michele Bachmann.
What Iowa really means when you break down the votes
30,000 Iowans vote for you = You are a key factor in the race.
16,000 Iowans vote for you = You’re not sure what, if anything, will happen next.
12,000 Iowans vote for you = You go back to your home state to reassess where you are in the campaign.
6,000 Iowans vote for you = They barely say your name on TV throughout the night.
Iowa had 25 delegates on the line. That’s it. Of the top 6 vote-getters, 14,000-16,000 votes separated the top of the pack from the “are they going to continue” pack.
If you took one of the two top vote-getters (Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum) and Newt Gingrich, who came in fourth, their combined votes would have filled Philadelphia’s baseball stadium, the crowd that saw this year’s Winter Classic as the New York Rangers edged the Philadelphia Flyers.
Next year’s Winter Classic might be in the “Big House,” the University of Michigan’s football stadium. To evenly fill that stadium, you could take the voters for Romney, Santorum, Ron Paul, and Gingrich.
Yes, Iowa matters. But when you break down the numbers, there aren’t a lot of there there.
So yes, Rick Santorum has a bright spotlight on him, whether he is the next Mike Huckabee or someone who get the nomination. Mitt Romney have to be thrilled to win; he was looking at second or third and still would have been happy. Ron Paul had a good night. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Gingrich got more votes than Romney or Santorum, so clearly many Republicans aren’t behind a high-level candidate.
This is why New Hampshire matters. And South Carolina. And a few other states. Let some of the rest of us have a vote.
