Justin's Political Corner
After watching the Republican presidential candidates lose the last two elections, right-wing activist Ken Blackwell cooked up a scheme whereby states would move away from winner-take-all allocations of electors to a system in which Electoral College votes would be assigned according to congressional districts.
The result would be that a Republican presidential candidate who does not win the overall popular vote in the state could still end up receiving a majority of that state’s electoral votes simply by virtue of winning the popular vote in more individual districts.
Today, Blackwell appeared on “WallBuilders Live” to promote this scheme, where it was met with enthusiastic support from Rick Green and David Barton. As Blackwell explained, if every state had implemented this plan for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would have won despite the fact that he lost the overall popular vote by nearly 5 million votes.
Blackwell: There’s an old farmer’s tale that if you throw a brick at a pack of pigs, the one that squeals is the one you hit. Well, when we put this out there, the Left started squealing, the New York Times started squealing, so we must be on to something.
Green: You must be on to something. No doubt about that. I haven’t had a chance to look, I don’t if anyone has done a map, I’d be real curious to know if every state did this, how would the last few elections [have gone]? Have you had a chance to look?
Blackwell: I already know. If every state did it, Romney would have won the election. And so that’s another reason that the Left just instinctively dislikes it.
…
Barton: This actually is a way to give the people a greater voice rather than just having the majority slap it to the minority every time you turn around. And I really like what he’s proposed here with reverting back out of the winner-take-all philosophy of the states, going back to congressional district take all, which is a good way to do it.
From the 05.02.2013 edition of Wallbuilders Live:
Tonight on The #EdShow: The person who exposed Mitt Romney’s #47percent comments has been leaked, and his name is #ScottProuty.
“Scott Prouty.”
The fellow on the other end of the phone call pronounced his name with hesitation. For nearly a fortnight, he and I had been building a long-distance rapport via private tweets, emails, and phone conversations as we discussed how best to make public the secret video he had shot of Mitt Romney talking at a private, $50,000-per-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida. Now I was almost ready to break the story at Mother Jones. I had verified the video, confirming when and where it had been shot, and my colleagues and I had selected eight clips—including Romney’s now-infamous remarks about the 47 percent of Americans he characterized as “victims” unwilling to “take personal responsibility and care for their lives”—to embed in two articles. We had blurred these clips, at the source’s request, to make it difficult to tell where Romney had uttered these revealing comments, while clearly showing that it was Romney speaking. The goal was to afford the source a modicum of protection.
The source was justifiably worried about repercussions. Once the video was posted, he might lose his job. He might face criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit. Months earlier, he had anonymously posted a snippet from the video, in which Romney nonchalantly described the work-camp-like living conditions at a Chinese factory he had visited. The source, offended by these comments, had hoped that the short clip would catch fire in the political-media world. But it hadn’t, partly because its context and origins were unknown. The source’s desire to remain in the shadows had hindered his ability to bring the story to the public.
Then James Carter IV, a freelance researcher (and, though I didn’t know it then, the grandson of Jimmy Carter) who had been sending me public documents regarding Romney’s prior business investments, had, at my request, tracked the anonymous poster down. I subsequently persuaded him to send me the full video of the fundraiser and to allow me to release portions of it, under the strict condition that I’d do whatever was possible to keep his identity hidden. He did not want to become the story. He hoped the public would focus only on Romney’s words. And through all this, he had not told me who he was, though he disclosed that he had worked at the fundraiser and insisted that he was no political partisan and had filmed Romney more out of curiosity than as part of a plan to trap the GOP candidate.
I respected his desire for privacy. He was about to commit a courageous and unprecedented act of whistle-blowing. But as we neared publication, I said I had to know his name. Do you really need it? he asked. Yes, I replied, explaining I could not publish the stories without knowing his identity. I vowed I would keep it a secret.
I had waited until the final moments to press him on this. I realized there was a chance that he might decline to identify himself, and the story would die. He asked once more if it was necessary. I said it was and held my breath. There was a long silence. “Scott,” he said. “Scott Prouty.” Thank you, I replied. Then we moved on to other details.
When I got off the phone, I did the obvious: I Googled him. The initial results were worrisome. I found mug shots for two men with that name who had been arrested. But then I located aproclamation (issued by the mayor and town council of Davie, Florida) that the source had mentioned earlier. On September 25, 2005, a car had plunged into a canal along I-75 and sunk into the water. Prouty, then working at motorcycle dealership, rushed to the scene. A tall fellow with a strapping build, Prouty jumped into the water and, using a knife provided by a fellow employee, cut the seatbelt, freed the unconscious woman in the driver’s seat, and handed her to a coworker who revived her with CPR. Prouty, who had noticed there was a child safety seat in the car, kept diving into the dark water in search of a child. But there had been no one else in the car. The proclamation noted that Prouty and two of his coworkers had taken “valiant and swift lifesaving actions in the face of an emergency without thought to their own safety” and declared them “lifesaving heroes.” I also found a local newsletter with a photo of Prouty and his colleagues being honored by the Weston City Commission for their heroism (his name was misspelled “Proudly”). The picture did not match either of the mug shots, and I saw that one of the other Proutys was incarcerated in Wisconsin, while the other seemed to be from a different part of Florida. I was relieved. I would later learn that my source was a college-educated bartender, in his late 30s, who had grown up in the Boston area.
Days later, we published the first article. It went hyper-viral. The 47 percent story quickly became bigger than Prouty and I had expected. Realizing he could not keep hidden the location and date of what was becoming the most notorious fundraiser in modern history, Prouty gave me permission to reveal those details, to remove the blurring from the videos we had posted, and to release the entire video he had sent me. This will make it easier for someone to track you down, I said. If they want to find me, he replied, they will.
And there was this: If Prouty did claim credit, he would immediately become a target of the right, especially during the campaign. He could expect an effort to smear and discredit him.
But it was also natural for Prouty to want to accept the many accolades flowing to the mystery videographer. Why not come forward and enjoy the moment? There might be a financial benefit, or, better yet, an opportunity to enhance his career prospects. He was interested in going back to school or working in public policy. Donations or other assistance might materialize. Some media outlets were looking to make offers.
In the course of our ongoing discussions, I said I would support him, whatever he did. I did point out that were he to reveal himself, he could expect forces on the right to dig up whatever dirt could be found on him, his friends, and his family—or to make stuff up. I had no idea if this was a real concern, but I wanted him to consider the possibility. As he pondered his options, he repeatedly told me that he did not want to distract from the impact of his video. And he meant it.
After the election, the dynamics changed slightly. Prouty no longer had to fret about any possible retribution from a Romney administration. But the fundamentals remained. Going public would bring cheers and perhaps rewards but also place him in the crosshairs. I was frequently asked whether I thought my source would out himself. I answered that I could envision him remaining a ghost for the next 20 years, or deciding to hold a press conference the next day. I got the sense that he was living with a tough choice—and thinking about it—every day.
wondered if Prouty’s role would remain a secret for as long. But he has now decided to come forward. Not for a big payoff, but to pursue the same passion for social justice that caused him to post that China clip. I’ll let him explain that and his motives—for making the video, for releasing it, and for now stepping out of the shadows. He’s doing so with an hourlong interview on The Ed Show. It’s his story, and I’m glad he’s telling it.
h/t: Mother Jones
Mitt Romney stood by his belief that President Obama was aided in his re-election by giving gifts to minority voters, during an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”
“The president had the power of incumbency, ‘Obamacare’ was very attractive, particularly to those without insurance, and they came out in large numbers to vote,” Romney said. “So that was part of a successful campaign.”
Romney first made comments to this effect on a conference call with donors after the November election, when he said Obama had been “very generous” in doling out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as women during his first term.
“I think the ‘Obamacare’ attractiveness and feature was something we underestimated, particularly among lower incomes,” Romney said.
h/t: TPM LiveWire
On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Colin Powell condemned the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance” and the party’s repeated use of racial code words to oppose President Obama and rally white conservative voters.
Without mentioning names, Powell singled out former Mitt Romney surrogate and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for calling Obama “lazy” and Sarah Palin, who, Powell charged, used slavery-era terms to describe Obama:
POWELL: There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that?
When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?
From the 01.13.2013 edition of NBC’s Meet The Press:
Powell added that the Republican Party is “having an identity problem,” noting that its significant shift to the right has produced “two losing presidential campaigns.”
“Slut.” “Prostitute.”
These words defined Rush Limbaugh in 2012 after he smeared Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who testified before Congress about women’s health care. Limbaugh’s misogynistic attack, which spanned three days of his radio show, did incalculable, long-term damage not only to Limbaugh’s brand, but also to the right-wing talk-radio format he helped to build and the conservative movement he has shaped for decades.
Limbaugh’s attacks on Fluke led to a paradigm shift in talk radio, as advertisers reassessed their support for inflammatory hosts. Limbaugh’s toxic rhetoric helped shine a glaring spotlight on the broader conservative movement’s policies toward women, focusing public attention on the radical right-wing effort to dismantle reproductive rights and the social safety net.
Limbaugh’s unique brand of misinformation was not limited to sexist rhetoric. Throughout 2012, Limbaugh was an architect of the right-wing bubble that pushed conspiracy theories and denied reality, notably helping to create a false narrative that Mitt Romney was on the verge of winning a landslide election. As that right-wing bubble collapsed, so, too, did Limbaugh’s four-year campaign of hoping - and trying to ensure - that President Obama would fail.
It is for these reasons that Media Matters recognizes Rush Limbaugh as the 2012 Misinformer of the Year. Past recipients include: Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. (2011); Sarah Palin (2010); Glenn Beck (2009); and Sean Hannity (2008).
On February 23, 2012, Sandra Fluke testified before a congressional panel about women’s health care and the benefits of insurance coverage for contraceptive care. During her testimony, she spoke about a woman who needed birth control pills to treat a medical condition, but who was denied coverage by her insurance company and couldn’t afford the medication.
On February 29, Limbaugh began a series of attacks on Fluke, pointing to her testimony and calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute.” In a complete distortion of Fluke’s actual testimony that was shocking in its ignorance, Limbaugh claimed that she was essentially asking to be ”paid to have sex”:
LIMBAUGH: What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke [sic], who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex.
She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.
Limbaugh continued his screed against Fluke the next day, saying: ”If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it. And I’ll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.” Over the course of the March 1 and March 2 editions of his radio show, Limbaugh spent nearly six hours directing a hate-filled tirade at Fluke, saying that she was “having so much sex it’s amazing she can walk,” saying that she had boyfriends “lined up around the block,” and saying that Fluke admitted she was “having so much sex that she can’t pay for it.”
Limbaugh’s sexist tirade quickly found support throughout the right-wing echo chamber. CNN contributor Erick Erickson wrote on his blog, RedState, that Fluke “really believes that American tax payers should … pay for her birth control pills so she can have sex.” Conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch wrote on Breitbart.com that Fluke was “testifying that she simply cannot stop getting it on and her inability to control her urges constitutes infringing upon everyone else for a bailout.” Fox News Radio reporter Todd Starnes posted more than a dozen comments on Twitter supporting Limbaugh’s attacks. Blog posts at National Review Online, Hot Air, and NewsBusters also defended Limbaugh’s points.
But outside the right-wing media bubble, Limbaugh was savaged from a variety of sources. Republican and Democratic congressional leaders as well as commentators from the left, right, and center all offered criticism for what Sen. John McCain called comments that were “unacceptable in every way.”
While Limbaugh began publicly denying that his show was suffering from the loss of advertisers, privately he was going into crisis management mode. The New York Times reported in March that he hired a reputation and crisis manager. And while Limbaugh was bragging about his ratings on the air, Politico reported in May that his show ”took a significant radio hit in some key radio markets” in the wake of his Sandra Fluke attacks.
Limbaugh’s partners were soon losing millions of dollars as a result of the loss of advertisers. The New York Times reported that less than two weeks after his attack on Fluke, Premiere Radio Networks had lost nearly $2 million in advertising revenue. In May, Limbaugh affiliate Cumulus Media reported losing several million dollars in revenue over two quarters. In August, Cumulus suggested it had lost more than $5 million on its top three radio stations alone due to factors related to the Limbaugh advertiser boycott.
As Daily Beast columnist John Avlon noted: “Rush Limbaugh made the right-wing talk-radio industry, and he just might break it.”
At the same time Limbaugh came under fire for his slut-shaming campaign against Sandra Fluke, it became impossible to separate his misogynistic comments from a larger critique of the conservative movement.
In targeting Fluke, Limbaugh was specifically reacting to testimony about the benefits of using health insurance to expand access to contraceptive care. That testimony came as conservatives were fighting against efforts to require insurers to provide this basic health care coverage to women. Limbaugh, long identified as a leader of the conservative movement, explained the opposition by likening health insurance coverage of contraception to a woman knocking on his door in the middle of the night and demanding money so she could “have sex with three guys tonight.” Sean Hannity echoed Limbaugh’s explanation of the movement’s opposition, saying that requiring insurance companies to provide coverage for contraceptive care amounted to “the taxpayer bearing the cost of the sex life of students at Georgetown University law school.”
Throughout the year, as questions were raised about the negative effects fringe conservative positions would have on women, Limbaugh was at the forefront. In February, when conservative lawmakers in Virginia came under fire for pushing legislation that would have required women to undergo an invasive ultrasound prior to seeking an abortion, Limbaugh downplayed the concerns. When Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin came under fire for saying it was “really rare” for women subjected to “legitimate rape” to become pregnant, Limbaugh first called on Akin to put the country first in weighing whether to remain in the race. But as it became clear that Akin was going to remain in the race, Limbaugh was quick to move on, touting polling numbers suggesting the Republican Party had forgiven Akin for the comments.
“Everything - except the polls - points to a Romney landslide.”
So said Rush Limbaugh on the eve of the 2012 presidential election, an election that has come to be defined by the right-wing media’s absolute denial of reality and embrace of paranoid conspiracy theories in order to convince themselves that Obama would fail to secure a second term.
When conservatives accused the Labor Department of cooking the books to make the unemployment rate seem lower than it was in order to help reelect Obama, Limbaugh was there. When conservatives warned that pollsters were colluding to unfairly bias their samples in favor of Obama, Limbaugh was there. Limbaugh pushed poll trutherism so far to the fringe that he began stoking fears of violence in the aftermath of a Romney election victory.
Rush Limbaugh did not react well to being proved so wrong and so all wet. The day after the election, he told his audience that “we’re outnumbered” and “we’ve lost the country.” He also suggested that “one of the most outrageous thefts of an election in the history of elections has taken place.” On November 15, Limbaugh declared that “freedom did not win in this election.”
But government did work. Obama’s 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been credited by experts with increasing economic growth, creating jobs, and lowering unemployment. The auto rescue was only made possible with the use of taxpayer money to successfully shepherd the three big auto companies through bankruptcy — saving well over a million jobs. The Affordable Care Act survived Supreme Court scrutiny. And voters opted for four more years.
Rush Limbaugh may still rank at the top of the talk radio industry, but he has also undeniably weakened the very industry he has dominated for so long. The advertiser backlash did not just damage Limbaugh and his business partners short-term; the entire talk radio industry is still suffering massive financial losses due to his utterance of “those two words.”
Virginia State Senator Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr. (R) has become the latest swing state-Republican to propose a scheme to rig presidential elections for future Republican candidates. Blue Virginia reportshis proposed SB 723 would award the state’s electors based on which candidate gets the majority of votes in each gerrymandered Congressional district — rather than based on who gets the most votes statewide.
The Carrico bill would award one of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes in each of the Commonwealth’s 11 Congressional Districts. The remaining two electors would go to the candidate who won the majority of Congressional Districts. With aRepublican-controlled redistricting passed earlier this year, Virginia Democrats were heavily packed into three districts. Under these maps, Obama won Virginia by almost a 4 point margin, yet he carried just four Virginia Congressional Districts. Were Carrico’s scheme in place, Mitt Romney would have received seven of Virginia’s 11 electoral votes despite receiving just 47.28% of the vote statewide.
Had the Carrico plan been instituted for the 2012 elections in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin, it is quite likely Mitt Romney would be the president-elect despite President Obama’s 51-47 majority.
According to the NY Daily News, Donald Trump‘s three eldest children held a pre-election meeting with the outspoken businessman to request that he tone down his anti-Obama rhetoric lest he ruin the family’s reputation.
A source told the New York paper that Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump met with their father in mid-October to request that he calm down the presidential bashing.
“The three of them met and went to see their dad in his Fifth Ave. office,” the source said. “They showed a lot of respect, but told him he’s worked too long and too hard to build up the reputation he has. They understand completely he’s always been outspoken and that he likes attention, but this is too much.”
However, Trump’s reps deny the existence of any such meeting, calling any rumors “completely untrue” and that his children love his exercise of “free speech” and would “they would never” try to rein in their father.
Throughout the 2012 election season, Trump became rather infamous for continually bashing the president over a variety of issues — namely whether Obama was legitimately born in the United States. Despite the state of Hawaii presenting an official birth certificate to try and end the whole debacle, Trump persisted on, claiming that there are ways for this document to have been fraudulent.
The News’ source said that the Trump “kids said they know it’s not helping” the business for Trump to be engaged in “birtherism.” “They told him you can’t throw this all away on this nonsense,” the source claimed.
Note that she does not identify any cases of fraud by Democrats while we have news reports of Republicans who were arrested for attempting voter fraud and filling in ballots.
Last week, American Family Association founder Don Wildmon appeared on AFA Today with Buster Wilson, where the conservative leader was mourning the re-election of President Obama. He said that the election represented the beginning of the end for Western civilization and that the U.S. will “end up in chaos” as “ultimately we’re going to change the Constitution or do away with it.”
Obama wins Florida, tops Romney 332 to 206 in electoral votes
Barack Obama has been declared the winner in Florida, topping Mitt Romney in the final electoral vote tally 332 to 206, AP reports.
Florida officials said Obama had 50% of the vote to Romney’s 49.1%, a margin of about 74,000 votes.
Photo: President Barack Obama addresses supporters during his election night rally in Chicago, Nov. 6, 2012. (Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)
FINALLY over.
BOSTON (AP) — Mitt Romney spent the past six years running for president. After his loss to President Barack Obama, he’ll have to chart a different course.
His initial plan: spend time with his family. He has five sons and 18 grandchildren, with a 19th on the way.
“I don’t look at postelection to be a time of regrouping. Instead it’s a time of forward focus,” Romney told reporters aboard his plane Tuesday evening as he returned to Boston after the final campaign stop of his political career. “I have, of course, a family and life important to me, win or lose.”
The most visible member of that family — wife Ann Romney — says neither she nor her husband will seek political office again.
“Absolutely he will not run again,” she told the hosts of ABC’s “The View” in October when asked if a loss would mean the end of Romney’s political career. “Nor will I.”
Romney’s senior advisers refused to speculate publicly about what might be next for their longtime boss. There was a general consensus, however: The 65-year-old Romney is unlikely to retire altogether. But following his defeat, his future role in a divided Republican Party is unclear.
“He’s not a guy who’s going to stay still, right. He’s not a guy that’s just going to hit a beach, play a lot of golf. He’ll do something,” said Russ Schriefer, one of Romney’s top strategists.
The Republican presidential nominee spent most of his career in private business. He’s run for office four times, and lost all but his bid for Massachusetts governor in 2002. That year, he ran as a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and struck a conciliatory tone on gay rights and climate change. He also ran for the Senate.
After he decided to run for president, some of those positions changed. In his two presidential campaigns, he ran as an opponent of abortion, advocated amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage and described himself as “severely conservative.”
But the Republican Party’s most passionate voters never fully embraced him. Romney struggled through a long and nasty primary, losing state contests to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom had long been sitting on their party’s sidelines.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Romney will seek an ongoing role in a Republican Party that’s embarking upon a period of soul-searching. With a successful career in the private sector, he could secure a position in private business, though he is worth millions and hasn’t worked a job with a regular paycheck in more than a decade. Those close to Romney also suggest he could purse philanthropic opportunities or even play a role in the Olympics after having led the 2002 Winter Games.
On the flip side, other party leaders are insisting his loss means the GOP needs to reject some of the harsh rhetoric Romney embraced on issues important to women and Hispanics. “The country is changing, and the people our party appeals to is a static group,” said Republican strategist Mike Murphy.
h/t: Yahoo! News
