The political zombies from previous failed Republican campaigns simply refuse to go quietly into the night.
First we had Rick Santorum maintaining his moral crusader profile and penning articles for conspiracy “news” site World Net Daily as he treads water waiting for 2016.
Then we had Rick Perry announcing his intention to stand down from the Texas governorship after his current term expires, and floating the hilarious possibility of a second presidential run.
And now it is the turn of everyone’s favourite reality TV star, Sarah Palin, to publicly float her future political intentions. Yes. The person who makes Michele Bachmann look cerebral and wise.
The lady with the uncontrollable facial tick thinks that she would make a good US senator.
RealClearPolitics reports on a recent appearance by Palin on Sean Hannity’s radio show:
SEAN HANNITY: There’s been talk that you might run for Senator in Alaska. Have you considered that at all?
SARAH PALIN: I’ve considered it because people have requested me to consider it. But, I’m still waiting to see what the lineup will be and hoping that — there again, there will be some new blood, new energy, not just kind of picking from the same old politicians in the state that come from political families, that have sort of reigned up there for so many years because too many of them have been part of the problem.
I’m glad you brought that up because Senator Mark Begich has got to be replaced. He has not done what he has promised to do for the people of Alaska, and that was to represent what it is that the nation needs in terms of energy development and so many other natural resources — development issues that are near and dear to Alaskans hearts because he is on the wrong side of the aisle he has to go along to get along with his Democrat leadership. And that is a shame. That is a waste of opportunity for our nation.
HANNITY: If you think that whoever is running doesn’t have the ability to win, and you think you could, would that propel you into the race you think?
PALIN: Well, I think any American with a heart for service has to always have in the back of their mind that they would do anything, everything that they could to help the cause, even if perhaps it doesn’t look necessarily appealing or necessarily fitting in with a conventional plan that they tried to orchestrate for themselves or their family. I, along with anybody, would have to say that I would do whatever I could to help. If that was part of that help, then it would have to be considered. (Sean Hannity Show, July 9, 2013)
Of course, this declaration of intent is couched in the usual “reluctant saviour” terms that Palin and others love to use, i.e. they very much enjoy being private citizens, but are reluctantly considering returning to public office because they are being urged by so many people to do so. Because the one thing that the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body (ha!) lacks at present is the wisdom, experience and political conviction of Sarah Palin.
Some wonderful news from Britain today. If you write a letter to government ministers urging a change of course in public policy, or lobbying for a pet cause of yours, the public has no right to know about it, or what you have written. That is, if you are Prince Charles or a member of the Royal Family.
You’re there for decoration, not to make policy.
The “man” who is incapable of squeezing toothpaste onto his own toothbrush without the help of a butler, who travels the globe by taxpayer-funded flights and royal trains while encouraging the rest of us to take short, cold showers to stop global warming has carte blanche to meddle in public affairs. And we, the people, have no right to know what he is saying or lobbying for, because to inform us would be to jeopardise our perception of him as a politically impartial future monarch. Impartial my ass.
Three senior judges have ruled that the public has no right to read documents that would reveal how Prince Charles has sought to alter government policies.
The high court judges have rejected a legal attempt by the Guardian to force the publication of private letters written by the prince to government ministers.
Cabinet ministers have conceded that the prince’s private letters – dubbed “black spider memos” because of their scratchy handwriting – contained the prince’s “most deeply held personal views and beliefs” that could undermine the perception of his political neutrality.
First of all, the mere fact that Prince Charles takes time out of his busy schedule (mostly involving wearing kilts and hiking in Scotland, as far as I can tell) to write to government ministers about anything at all is what undermines the perception of his political neutrality. If he was politically neutral then his royal highness would not have the burning desire to write to British government cabinet members about all and sundry.
The article continues:
[Attorney General Dominic] Grieve had argued that disclosure of the 27 “particularly frank” letters between the prince and ministers over a seven-month period would have seriously damaged his future role as king. The attorney general said there was a risk that the prince would not be seen to be politically neutral by the public if the letters were published.
“This risk will arise if, through these letters, the Prince of Wales was viewed by others as disagreeing with government policy. Any such perception would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king,” Grieve had said.
Well, I’m glad that the Attorney General of the United Kingdom is worrying about such important matters when we have so many pressing issues about the devolvement of power in our country, the limits on government intrusion into our private lives and the fact that so many people are actually suffering in this country thanks to the many structural problems created by the political elites of years past, the last disastrous Labour government and our current coalition government’s slapstick attempts to correct them.
[The Guardian] won a landmark victory last September when three judges in a FoI tribunal ordered the government to publish the letters as it was “in the public interest for there to be transparency as to how and when Prince Charles seeks to influence government”.
However, a month later, Grieve, with the support of the cabinet, issued the veto which overrode the tribunal’s decision.
Seriously. How messed up is our country when some over-entitled government minister can override the ruling of a court of law? Written constitution and proper separation of powers, anyone? Good idea? No?
On Tuesday, the lord chief justice, accompanied by Lord Justice Davis and Mr Justice Globe, dismissed the challenge, finding that Grieve had acted in the public interest in a “proper and rational way”.
However, Judge said that the power of ministers under the FoI Act to issue a veto and override a decision reached by judges raised “troublesome concerns”, particularly as even a ruling by the supreme court could be overridden.
“The possibility that a minister of the crown may lawfully override the decision of a superior court of record involves what appears to be a constitutional aberration,” he said.
“It is an understatement to describe the situation as unusual,” he wrote, adding that barristers could find no equivalent in any other British law.
You think?! Since our newly created UK Supreme Court is in actual fact not supreme at all, perhaps we should rename it. How about the Court Of Second Last Resort Prior To Ministerial Intervention?
Of course, it is not just Prince Charles who seeks to lobby the government in support of his pet projects or issues of the day. The fact that David Cameron, George Osborne and Ed Balls all attended the recent Bilderberg 2013 meeting in Watford where they hobnobbed with the financial and business elites of the world with no reporting as to what they discussed or agreed to is ample evidence of this.
But why do we let an aging, entitled, sheltered and pampered little man meddle in our politics like this? This is the year 2013. This is no longer acceptable.
The article concludes:
Ministers argue that the letters must be concealed as it enables the prince to air his views privately with ministers so that he can “be instructed in the business of government”.
No. Prince Charles, in his ludicrous and anachronistic role as heir to the throne and future monarch, is entitled to be instructed in the business of government. Instructed. That means that the government elected by the people formulates policy, makes decisions and takes actions, and once it has done all of that, tells Prince Charles about it after the fact. What it most certainly does not mean is that Prince Charles gets to write his black spider letters, weighing in on all matters of public policy. Because that is influencing the business of government, not being informed about it.
Hundreds of years ago, people sincerely believed that these ridiculous people were granted the divine right to rule over us and represent our nation as Heads of State by God himself. That is no longer true, and the price for them keeping their palaces, treasures, land, unearned military uniforms and the servile adoration of the masses is that they shut up and keep their noses out of public policy. That’s it. End of discussion.
Prince Charles’s meddling has to stop. It is embarrassing and inappropriate in the extreme.
The worst news of the day by far: Rick Perry is about to make a Big Announcement today in San Antonio, regarding his political future. There should be no surprises here – he will run again for governor, and (as he has already warned us) has not ruled out a second presidential run in 2016:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry isn’t ruling out another Republican presidential run in 2016. But he didn’t announce on Sunday whether he’ll seek a fourth term as governor.
Asked about 2016 on “Fox News Sunday,” Perry said: “Well, certainly, that’s an option out there, but again, we got a lot of work to do in this building right behind me [the Texas capitol] over the course of the next couple of weeks that have my focus substantially more than even 2014 or 2016.”
As for whether he’ll run for another term as governor, he said he’s making an announcement on Monday.
Because apparently his disastrous, calamitous car-crash of a 2012 campaign has not conclusively deterred him:
Let’s abolish commerce, education and the department of…?
Sigh.
Can someone cheer me up by running a quick poll on a Clinton vs Perry 2016 election?
Republicans are trapped in a Prisoner’s Dilemma of their own making
My early prediction – barring some amazing or cataclysmic event or development, Republicans will comfortably lose the 2016 presidential election and a number of congressional seats (compared to the total that they hold after the 2014 midterms).
I am confident about this because of two intractable characteristics of the current Republican party, and their congressional delegation.
These Republicans don’t deny that weak support from Hispanic voters is hurting GOP presidential nominees. And they concede the problem may worsen if Latinos think Republicans are blocking “immigration reform.”
These House members, however, worry much more about their own constituents’ opposition to the proposed changes. And they fear a challenge in the next Republican primary if they ignore those concerns.
“It’s hard to argue with the polling they’ve been getting from the national level,” said Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, referring to signs of serious problems for Republican presidential candidates if immigration laws aren’t rewritten. “I just don’t experience it locally.”
For years, GOP senators have been stingy with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, refusing to make large transfers of money out of their personal campaign accounts that could help their party compete in neck-and-neck races across the country. For 2012, Democratic senators transferred nearly five times more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee than Republicans gave to the NRSC.
And just like last year, an initial look at the Senate map shows a path to the majority. It won’t be easy: Republicans will have to knock off well-financed Democratic incumbents, defend Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and limit the internecine primary warfare that has twice cost them a chance at the majority.
Top GOP senators say that’s exactly the point: Not maximizing the NRSC’s operations could be another unforced error. In short, without more money, you’ll still be in the minority.
So there you have it. Republican senators sitting on huge campaign war chests and facing the feeblest of Democratic opposition, are much less willing to give some of their surplus funds to colleagues and candidates desperately in need than their Democratic counterparts are on behalf of their own colleagues. Because current Republican orthodoxy tells them that Redistribution Is Always Bad, even if it takes place through the NRSC to further their supposed political objectives at a national level.
And Republican house members in heavily gerrymandered districts would rather stay in power and thwart a potential chance to get their party’s hands back on the executive branch of government because, though they all scream that more years of Obama or Democratic rule will spell the end for America, they are more worried still about the danger of a primary challenge from the right if they vote for comprehensive immigration reform.
The problem facing the GOP is so beautifully summed up by Alabama (…) Senator Richard Shelby:
But asked why he hasn’t transferred big bucks out of his massive war chest, Shelby said his donors wouldn’t be happy.
“I raise money out of my campaign for myself — not for you or anyone else,” Shelby said. “I tell my givers who it’s for. If they knew I was going to raise it to give it away, they probably wouldn’t give it away.”
My money. Mine.
Just go ahead and add another four years in the political wilderness to the GOP tab.
The unapologetic, unrelenting neo-conservative darling Charles Krauthammer yesterday decided to hold forth on the topic of Egypt, and (of course) use the situation to bash President Obama’s foreign policy. So far, so unsurprising. And indeed, he kicks off with the usual neo-con boilerplate nonsense that we have come to expect, painting a narrative where Obama is ditherer-in-chief at best, or staunchly pro-Islamist at worst:
Obama is a bystander, again. Here are the Egyptians in the millions out on the street, trying to bring down an Islamist government, increasingly dictatorial, increasingly intolerant, arresting journalists and judges, trying to Islamicize the military and the people are saying no, and what does the president of the United States do? He takes a position of studied neutrality, says he is not supporting either side. And yet, as you point out in the Mubarak revolution, he obviously strongly took the side of the people. He demanded that Mubarak had to go, he was not neutral.
But just feast your eyes on this closing sentence from Krauthammer:
That was a shameful episode. But there’s also idea of national interest. Mubarak was pro-American, he was an ally of ours, he helped us in all kinds of ways. Obama worked against him. Morsi represents a movement which is essentially deeply anti-American, and deeply anti-democratic, yet he is neutral on this.This is a shocking position for a president to take.
Did you see it? That is Charles Krauthammer twisting himself into a pretzel to argue that Morsi (autocratic and unpleasant but democratically elected) is somehow more anti-democratic than the dictator Hosni Mubarak (for whom, of course, all sins are forgiven because he was a US “ally”).
Whether President Obama’s position is “shocking” is a matter for debate. But what is not up for debate is the fact that unlike Charles Krauthammer, Obama is at least able to articulate his position without resorting to logical contradictions that make my head explode.
Semi-Partisan Politics 