Justin's Political Corner
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
(via Huffington Post: Sen. Lindsey Graham on Fox News Sunday: “Sacrifice Obamacare To Avoid Sequester”)
To avoid a March 1 sequester, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested on Fox News Sunday that Congress save money by cutting the Affordable Care Act instead.
“Here’s my belief: Let’s take Obamacare and put it on the table,” he said. “People are leaving the private sector because their companies can’t afford to offer Obamacare. If you want to look at ways to find $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, let’s look at Obamacare. Let’s don’t destroy the military and just cut blindly across the board.”
The White House recently released a fact sheet detailing the devastating effect a sequester could have on the economy if Congress fails to pass spending cuts by March 1, including a reduction in loan guarantees to small businesses by $900 million. The blame, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace pointed out on Sunday, would likely fall on Republicans, who are digging in their heels to protect tax cuts.
What a dummy.
Nancy Pelosi went on Fox News Sunday and absolutely destroyed the false premise that video games, not guns, are the main cause of gun violence.
WALLACE: Gun control will be a big part of the president’s agenda in the State of the Union address Tuesday night. But I want to ask you about another part of the effort to stop these horrible, repeated acts of mass violence. As part of your plan, you call for more scientific research on the connection between popular culture and violence.
We don’t need another study, respectfully. I mean, we know that these video games, where people have their heads splattered, these movies, these TV shows, why don’t you go to your friends in Hollywood and challenge them, shame them, and say, “Knock it off”?
PELOSI: Well, I do think, whatever we do, because when you talk about evidence-based, we have that throughout our proposal. In other words, we don’t want to just anecdotally writing bills. We want to have the evidence to say –
WALLACE: Well, I’m not sure you want to write bills anyway. But don’t you — I mean, what would — you have a lot of friends in Hollywood. Why don’t you go to them and publicly say I think challenge you to stop the video games?
PELOSI: I do think — see, I understand what you’re saying. I’m a mother, I’m a grandmother. But, they tell — not they, not Hollywood, but the evidence says that, in Japan, for example, they have the most violent games and the rest, and the lowest — death, mortality from guns. I don’t know what the explanation is for that except they may have good gun laws.
But I think you took one piece of it. We are talking about — we are talking about stop — no further sales of assault weapons. What is the justification for an assault weapon? You know, no further sales of those.
No further sales of the increased capacity, 30 rounds in a gun. We are talking about background checks which is very popular, even among gun owners, and, hunters. We avow the First Amendment, we stand with that, and say that people have a right to have a gun to protect themselves in their homes and their jobs, whatever. And that they — and their workplace — and that they, for recreation and hunting and the rest.
But we are in the questioning their right to do that —
Doing an interview on Fox News must be a lot like talking to small child. Pelosi actually had to explain to Wallace why it is important to have evidence of a problem before a bill is written to address it. Wallace’s notion of “knowing” why a problem is occurring without research or study is a very Republican way of governing. It is just like how Republicans “know” that there is voter fraud, so they pass voter ID laws.
Pelosi ripped apart the NRA’s favorite excuse that guns don’t cause gun violence, but video games do. Pelosi asked a good question. If violent video games cause gun violence, then why isn’t the problem as severe around the world as it is in the United States? They play lots of violent video games in Canada, Europe, and Asia too, yet other parts of the developed world don’t have the same level of gun violence as the United States.
The difference, as Leader Pelosi pointed out, is the laws. The Japanese play lots of violent video games, but they have the lowest mortality rate from gun violence because of strict gun laws.
The CEO of the National Rifle Association (NRA) says that the American public should not trust President Barack Obama’s push for new gun control laws because the administration lied about “Obamacare” being a tax and a universal background check would just be a “check on law-abiding people.”
“It’s a fraud to call it universal,” the NRA’s LaPierre told Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday. “It’s never going to be universal, the criminals aren’t going to comply with it, they could care less.”
“We ought to quit calling it right now a universal check, the real title ought to be the check on law-abiding people all over this country,” he insisted.
LaPierre showed Wallace a flyer from Obama’s 2012 campaign which he claimed said that the president was “not going to take away your rifle, shotgun, handgun.”
“And now he’s trying to take away all three!” he declared.
“He’s not taking away shotguns,” Wallace pointed out.
“Have you looked at the Feinstein [assault weapons ban] bill that he supported?” LaPierre shot back. “That’s exactly what it does. I think that what they’ll do is they’ll turn this universal check on the law abiding into a universal registry of law-abiding people. And law-abiding people don’t want that.”
Wallace, however, argued that “there’s nothing that anyone in the administration’s said that indicates they’re going to have a universal registry.”
“And Obamacare wasn’t a tax until they needed it to be tax,” LaPierre quipped. “I mean, I don’t think you can trust these [people].”
Think Progress: GOP House Candidate Mia Love Claims GOP War On Women Will Create ‘More Free Choice’ For Women
Small town Mayor Mia Love (R-UT), a GOP congressional candidate who received a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, is considered a rising star by many within her party. Yet she offered a defense of the Republican Party’s plans to roll back reproductive freedom on Fox News Sunday today that takes a significant amount of liberty with the English language. In a discussion about the GOP’s plan to make abortion illegal, defund Planned Parenthood and enable employers to restrict their employees’ access to birth control, Love suggested these policies will lead to “more free choice and more liberties” for women.
The Raw Story: On Fox News Sunday, Scalia suggests women have no right to contraception
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says that the pivotal decision which reversed a law that prohibited women from using contraception is not supported under his interpretation of the Constitution.
During an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Scalia why he believed that it is a “lie” that women have a Constitutional right to abortion.
“Nobody ever thought that the America people voted to prohibit limitations on abortions,” the 76-year-old conservative justice explained. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that.”
Responding to the tragic shooting in Colorado during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he would oppose gun control efforts that could be used to “restrict our freedoms” and instead suggested arming “responsible” people to combat “sick, demented individuals who want to do harm.”
Johnson also argued that any additional measures to restrict large gun magazines that carry 100 rounds of ammunition — similar to the high-capacity clip that the alleged Colorado shooter employed — would infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
JOHNSON: People will talk about unusually lethal weapons, that could be potentially a discussion you could have. But the fact of the matter is there are 30-round magazines that are just common. You simply can’t keep these weapons out of the hands of sick, demented individuals who want to do harm. And when you try to do it, you restrict our freedoms.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, joked Sunday about Mitt Romney’s infamous treatment of his family dog while discussing traveling conditions for her own pets.
Early in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” host John Roberts praised Schultz for appearing on the show during her family vacation, noting she had driven all the way from Florida to New Hampshire to celebrate July 4th “with four dogs, and a cat, and kids and the husband.”
“All of the dogs were actually in the car,” Schultz said. “So I proved it can be done.”
h/t: HuffPo
WASHINGTON — Republicans have said repeatedly that the landmark health care reform law, upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court last week, must be repealed and replaced. But the GOP leader in the U.S. Senate gave a surprising answer on “Fox News Sunday” when asked how Republicans would provide health care coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans.
“That is not the issue,” Sen. Mitch McConnell said. “The question is how to go step by step to improve the American health care system. It is already the finest health care system in the world.”
“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace interrupted, “You don’t think 30 million uninsured is an issue?”
“We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a western European system,” McConnell said. “That’s exactly what is at the heart of Obamacare. They want to … have the federal government take over all American health care. The federal government can’t handle Medicare or Medicaid.”
Wallace pressed McConnell, noting that the Affordable Care Act will prohibit insurance companies from not offering plans to individuals with pre-existing health conditions. “If you repeal Obamacare, how will you protect those people with pre-existing conditions?”
“Over the half of the states have high-risk pools that deal with that issue,” McConnell said, assuring Wallace that the state programs could cover the tens of millions of uninsured Americans who have pre-existing health conditions.
Thirty-five states now have high-risk pools, covering about 208,000 people. Those policies are open to individuals with pre-existing health issues but often come with high premiums, waiting periods and coverage exclusions for certain conditions.
The Affordable Care Act included a new federal high-risk pool (modeled on the state plans) called the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. So far, only 67,000 Americans have enrolled. The program will be phased out in 2014 when the law’s broader provisions kick in.
There are as many as 25 million Americans who lack insurance and have pre-existing conditions, and all together 50 million people are uninsured, according to government estimates. The White House expects 30 million Americans to gain insurance coverage as a result of the new law.
Appearing this morning on Fox News Sunday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called for the elimination of public sector unions. Huffington Post reports: “Wallace… asked whether Daniels would like to see public-sector unions disappear entirely. ‘I think government works better without them, I really do,’ Daniels replied.”
(via David at Crooks and Liars: Palin Not Sure Romney Will ‘Instinctively Turn Right’)
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin isn’t convinced that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the best presidential candidate because she’s not sure he will “err on the side of conservatism.”
Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Palin if Romney was an “instinctive conservative.”
“I trust that his idea of conservatism is evolving,” Palin replied. “I base this on a pretty moderate past that he has had — in some case even cases, a liberal past. Here, he agreed with mandating on the state level what his constituents needed to be provided, needed to purchase in the way of health care under Romneycare, which, of course, was the precursor to Obamaneycare — to Obamacare.”
The Sunday morning political talk shows have long played a key role in American political discourse, providing a venue for balanced discussion about key political topics. But in 2011 at least, they were heavily skewed to one political party over the other. According to a new analysis of shows like Meet the Press from Roll Call, Republican lawmakers appeared nearly twice as often as Democratic ones last year, and held a smaller advantage in previous years:In 2009 and 2010, Republican Members held a small advantage over Democratic Members in appearances on these programs, getting 52 percent of the invites in both years. In both years, CBS had more Democrats as guests than Republicans by a narrow margin; in the same period, Fox News had more Republican guests by a wider margin.
But in 2011, the GOP lawmakers captured 64 percent of the Congressional appearances on the five shows that Roll Call tracks, and every network featured more Republican lawmakers than Democrats. Of 330 Congressional appearances tallied by Roll Call last year, 210 went to Republicans and only 120 went to Democrats — fewer if you subtract the eight appearances made by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who caucuses with Democrats.
Certainly, some imbalance could be expected given that Republicans control the House and have a presidential primary contest, but the disparity could arguably be too great to explain this way. Michael Shanahan, assistant director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, offered another explanation: “Democrats aren’t all that interesting.” In other words, producers find that Democrats provide less entertainment value. Either way, it means that viewers will get disproportional exposure to one world view.
After President Obama announced that he is ending the Iraq War, virtually all of the Republican presidential candidates piled on in criticizing the move, even though two-thirds of Americans oppose the war. Mitt Romney called the decision an “astonishing failure” driven either by “naked political calculation or sheer ineptitude.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) also called it a “complete failure,” while Rick Santorum said the U.S had “lost the war in Iraq.”
Today on Fox News Sunday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) told host Chris Wallace that Obama was flat-out “irresponsible” for bringing the troops home, because, he argued, it is “putting our kids’ lives in jeopardy”:
PERRY: The idea that a commander-in-chief would stand up and signal to the enemy a date certain of when we’re going to pull our troops out I think is irresponsible. You need to be talking to your commanders in the field. You need to be working with the experts who understand what is going on in those countries, for instance. We need to finish our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. You better believe I want out kids home as soon as we can and safe. But to give that signal that we’re pulling them out is bad public policy and, more importantly, it’s putting our kids lives in jeopardy[…]
He has lost his standing from the standpoint of being a commander-in-chief who has any idea about what’s going on in those theaters. He’s making mistakes that are putting our kids that in theater and I think future issues dealing with whether it’s in the Middle East or the south China Sea with our allies, putting all of that in jeopardy because of this unwavering, or I should say this wavering or this aimless approach to foreign policy which he has.
Watch it:
Some senior military officials have been calling for a drawdown since 2009. It is hard to see how bringing soldiers home jeopardizes their safety. It’s also worth noting that if pulling out troops at the end of 2011 is a signal to the enemy, as Perry claims, it’s President George W. Bush who is the guilty party. Bush signed an agreement with Iraq to withdraw troops by the end of 2011, and Obama is just carrying that out.
