Friday Open Thread [1.31.14]

Filed in National by on January 31, 2014

Ann Friedman finds the GOP Messaging on Women conflicting.

Like Palin before her, [Congresswoman Cathy] McMorris Rodgers [,who gave the official GOP SOTU response], projects the supermom image that is quickly becoming the GOP’s go-to female archetype. Yet there’s a fair chance that even this superficial solidarity won’t resonate with women voters. “For most American women, this is the era of coming to grips with not having it all,” writes Hanna Rosin at Slate. “For Republican politicians, however, it’s the 1980s of the Enjoli, bring-home-the-bacon, 24-hour woman.” Why didn’t the GOP realize this decades earlier? The supermom archetype is perfect for a party whose policies send the message that if you’re not getting ahead, it’s because you aren’t working hard enough.

So, the GOP messaging is 30 years behind the times now? That seems about right.

Dana Millbank on doing away with the two term limit:

“Certainly, many second-term woes have been less about lame-duck status than about hubris, complacency and first-term mistakes catching up with presidents. But when a presidency has a constitutional expiration date, it increases the opposition’s incentive to stall. No wonder modern second terms have been almost uniformly unsuccessful.”

Yeah, but it is necessary. With no presidential term limits, Bill Clinton would likely still be President today. Not that I would mind that, but a 21 year presidency is a bit much.

So Gallup found that 56% of the uninsured population plan on getting insurance through the health insurance exchanges that have been set up by the ACA. But 38% say they are more likely to pay the fine the government assesses if you do not have insurance.

Markos:

That 38 percent generally approximates the conservative fringe of America, you know, the ones who clung to George W. Bush to the bitter end, the ones who believe Obama was born in Kenya, the ones sickened by America’s creeping communism. There are probably a handful in that 38 percent who are choosing to pay the fine for non-ideological reasons. But there are many more who are doing so to spite the president.

I love the irony. They are willing to put their entire family and financial well being at risk to spite the President by not getting affordable insurance through a government exchange, because FREEDOM!!! and in so doing they will pay a fine that will go to the government to help others get affordable insurance.

It’s your life, you teabaggers. If you want to ruin your lives, have at it.

When Chris Christie Bridgegate scandal broke, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was on air that weekend supporting the New Jersey Governor. Now Giuliani says it is “fifty-fifty” over whether Christie was lying and in fact knew about the bridge closures. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) runs a clinic on how to response when you fuck up and are facing criticism: you accept responsibility and apologize rather than blame others and dodge accountability (the path Christie chose).

Deal “called for a top-to-bottom review of the government’s response to the epic traffic jam in the aftermath of Tuesday’s snowfall and he and the state’s top emergency staffer apologized for failing to adequately prepare for the storm.” Said Deal: ‘I am not satisfied with the response. But I am not going to look for a scapegoat. I am the governor, and the buck stops with me.'”

Those that follow Deal’s example tend to survive crisis, and those that follow Christie’s path don’t.

POLLING:

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Quinnipiac: Hillary Clinton 64, Joe Biden 9. No other Democrat is above 5.

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Quinnipiac: Jeb Bush 25, Marco Rubio 16, Rand Paul 11, Ted Cruz 9, Chris Christie 9, Paul Ryan 5

FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Quinnipiac: Clinton 49, Bush 43; Clinton 51, Rubio 41; Clinton 53, Paul 38; Clinton 52, Ryan 39; Clinton 51, Christie 35; Clinton 54, Cruz 34.

Some of the internals in this poll are pretty interesting:

* Florida voters say 45 – 35 percent that Christie would not make a good president.
* But Hillary would make a good president, by a margin of 58-38.
* So would Jeb, by 50-40.
* Clinton outscores Christie on honesty and trustworthiness, with 54% saying she is, while 44% say he is.

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  1. liberalgeek says:

    Part of that 38% are people that don’t realize that they are eligible for free healthcare. My wife works with many very low-income people that have been saying that they will just pay the fine instead. They apparently don’t realize that they have access to Medicare.

    I suspect that when it comes down to it, the actual number will be about 15% pay the tax to spite the program.

  2. Camptown Lady says:

    …they are eligible for free healthcare.

    There’s no such thing as ‘free.’

    When the gold-backed Chinese yuan replaces the dollar as the world’s ‘reserve currency’ (and the Chinese are lobbying, vigorously), the US will re-learn, overnight, what it used to take for granted- that there is no free lunch. Just imagine, no more printing ‘currency’ as a way to pay debt; for steel, copper, uranium, chromium, petroleum, aluminum and so on.

    It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’

    Luckily, even though the Chinese are buying-up vast sums of gold (using US interest payments), the US still has tremendous stores. It may be that the only way to keep the dollar competitive with the yuan will be to return to the gold standard. In other words, a return to real money.

    The world is a competitive place, and our ‘friends’ don’t give a damn about the fiscal condition of our social programs. An extremely weak dollar will mean less imports and more domestic production, particularly in the sphere of energy; after all, Americans simply will not give-up their cars and still will want to heat their homes. Hence, a weakened dollar will precipitate a rush for less expensive energy; more coal and more oil (including offshore and shale).

  3. Jason330 says:

    How silly. Debt/deficit panic would be funny if so many stupid people didn’t believe it so passionately.

    The dollar (and the economy) is more threatened by our willingness to shut down the government and create artificial crises in pursuit of austerity than it is threatened by Obamcare. Don’t let facts trip you up though. Fear of the yuan is probably healthier for you than fear of higher taxes.

  4. cassandra_m says:

    No one “lobbies” to be a reserve currency. You’d wonder why the yuan isn’t a reserve currency now since their economy is stronger than ours. And you can put the large blame on both the fact that their financial markets are no where near as strong AND that currency investors aren’t as interested in a currency that is strictly managed by a Communist government to their own favor.

    Camptown here went to the same school of economics Dana did.

  5. Jason330 says:

    The 2 term limit was the only thing that made the George Bush presidency bearable.

  6. knows better says:

    Interesting that the yuan is being brought up in this respect. An elderly friend watches Fox News and knowing one of my degrees is economics brought the subject up recently. I explained how although one day it’s possible that another currency could replace the US dollar it wouldn’t be in our lifetimes unless a major castrophy happened to our economy and others as well. He was adament and stating the same talking points over and over until I finally got him to say he heard it on Fox business news. I asked him when was the last time something he heard there actually happened and got a “nothing yet”. I ended the conversation quickly and gently. Fox scares the hell out the gullibly uneducated and the elderly (some of which are educated). The only good thing regarding Fox is the sports and local news…in smaller markets.

  7. Jason330 says:

    Since my father-in-law retired and started watching Fox News and Fox Business full time he has gone off the deep end. His head is so full of nonsense that he can’t get through a 5 minute conversation without blurting our something ridiculous.

  8. knows better says:

    Jason 330 and I agree? Opps! Went back and reread my comment just to be sure I got it right. It did so it actually happened that we agree. Maybe it will happen again…?
    Sometimes, well actually most of the time, I wonder if Fox News followers actually hear the things they say out loud. Usually they open mouth and you know in 30 seconds how they became ‘experts’.

  9. Jason330 says:

    BREAKING – Wildstien rolled over on Christie and has a letter that proves Christie was personally behind the GWB lane closures:

    NYT – “The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening, and that he had the evidence to prove it.

    In a letter released by his lawyer, the official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.”