The Politics Thread

[Eric83]

I loathe Nathan Deal he is a crooked, racist, homophobic hypocrite! I really hope he does not win. When the official Republican and Democratic nominations were annoumced on the Atlanta news circuit I saw an overwhelmingly majority of favor for Carter. I do side eye him for voting in favor of the "Guns Everywhere" bill but he is much more concerned about education and healthcare than Deal who'd rather drain our finances drug testing people on government assistance. Thanks!

[NothinButAttitude]

And that's why he's gonna win here sadly. People here are so wrapped up and brainwashed by religion and hatred that they'd rather keep things the same then change for the better. Georgia is always one of the last states to bend to any change.

[DRW50]

Oh that liberal media.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/alison-grimes-kentucky-coal-miner-model-107489.html

[DRW50]

More fun with the liberal media, trying to tell us how Ed Gillespie, longtime Beltway hero and talk show guest, can win in Virginia. My favorite is the one about how a black woman introduced him at the convention, so he's already on his way!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/how-ed-gillespie-could-pull-off-an-upset-107569.html

[DRW50]

And this is why some Democrats are pure poison to their party and the public.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-philip-puckett-resigning-virginia-gop-medicaid

[allmc2008]

This is why I just **LOVE** Texas!!

[Roman]

Eric Cantor has been defeated by his Tea Party opponent. And the rest of these Republicans are also on their way out.

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

Political is so thirsty for a change in the Senate its quite sad.

Shocked about Eric Cantors loss.

[DRW50]

So am I. I read several times over the last few months that his opponent was getting traction, but I didn't think that meant a loss.

His district screwed itself, because goodbye pork, but he was a smug despot-in-training, so I can't complain. I think his smarminess and lack of warmth did him in.

This mentions The Rains of Castamere, which cracks me up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/10/no-one-saw-eric-cantors-primary-loss-coming-in-an-endless-number-of-shocked-tweets/?tid=up_next

My all time favorite Cantor story.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/25/eric-cantor-attends-britn_n_179160.html

This is going to pretty much guarantee no immigration reform passes anytime soon, although that was already a guarantee. And this will push the party even further to the right.

And as always the media got it wrong, assuming he was safe.

Apparently Dave Brat is known as the "hot professor," which...uh OK.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/dave-brat-rate-my-professor-virginia-primary-2014-107691.html?hp=l1

Speaking of the GOP, this says it all about their idea of sexism. They get outraged over the Sarah Palin of Iowa being compared to a baby chick. Meanwhile, her husband calls Hillary a hag.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/06/09/joni-ernst-bruce-braley-hillary-clinton-us-senate-hag-facebook/10252117/

Edited June 11, 2014 by DRW50

[AdelaideCate007]

Can someone explain to me exactly what the tea party is? Are they a group separate from the Republicans or are they another branch? Our news here tends to lump them all together as Republicans but then I see other places making it seem like they're two separate groups.

[DRW50]

In 2009, after the GOP was shut out of Congress and the White House and wanted to rebrand, up popped the Tea Party. Some of this felt like fake astroturf stuff created by Fox News and the like, and some was genuine discontentment. The idea of the Tea Party, according to the spin at the time, was that they cared about nothing but fiscal issues and lowering taxes, and they were angry at both parties as a result.

This was a lie, because many of them cared deeply about social issues, and many of them were still Republicans, still voting Republican, and were likely a plan by the GOP higher-ups to get back into power.

They did get back into power, but the problem is they assumed that this horde would just stay in their place, as the far right had so often done for the GOP over the years (especially during the George W. Bush years, when they had expected far more than he delivered in terms of conservative legislation).

As we've seen over and over in the past 5 years, they are not satisfied with just getting crumbs. They have taken over much of the party. Here's an example from Texas, a state where GOP governors had a fairly long tradition of supporting immigration, and now it's all hardline all the time.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/dan-patrick-texas-republican-party-tea-party

The media, which is closely tied to establishment Republicans like Karl Rove, keep waiting for things to go back to normal, keep writing obituaries for the Tea Party. And they keep on being kicked in the teeth.

[Vee]

They are bigoted, xenophobic extremists who despise Obama, some of whom espouse a bizarre separatist ideology and occasionally let loose with sentiments that border on domestic terrorism.

The GOP believed they could channel all this hate, fear and low-info neuroses into their existing coffers and power base, believed they could control these people. They can't. The Tea Party has been taking seats from establishment GOP, disrupting working government and eating the Republican Party alive ever since. And now the establishment GOP is practically beholden to them, in fear of losing their seats like Cantor or others. The lunatics have hijacked the asylum.

The Tea Party was also never an organic grassroots movement - it was built, bought and paid for by major right wing donors and then activated amongst the base.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Vee

[DRW50]

Wow. This paper has fallen very far.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/washington-post-sexual-assault-marriage

[quartermainefan]

Listen to what I tell you here and don't pay attention to anything you read in any newspaper: The Tea Party is the Republican Party and tea partiers are racist xenophobic rubes and hicks. They pretended they were not republicans but rather mere common sense people tired of big government, but the first thing every tea partier does when they get into office is vote to ban abortions and gay marriage.

They tend to be ignoramuses, poorly educated, barely literate fools who do not believe in global warming and want our schools to stop teaching evolution and instead teach in science class all about Adam and his rib. They resent everyone who isn't white, they don't like gay people having rights, they want everyone to carry a gun everywhere and the streets and schools should be the OK Corral...they think Sarah Palin is a well spoken genius so really what else need be said?

And the way you know the tea party is the republican party is the damning fact that everything I just said applies equally to both.

[Vee]

Oddly enough, it's not unlike what a friend of mine in Australia had been describing to me about a recent election down there - I thought what he described sounded just like the Tea Party taking seats. And now we have this, I'll have to fill him in.