Scalise: "No place is perfect." MT @ProPublica: New Congress is 80% white, 80% male & 92% Christian pic.twitter.com/Buw9xZnkHL
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 5, 2015
Steve Scalise is keeping his job in the leadership, per Dave Weigel at Bloomberg, and “the GOP Thinks It’s Turned A Corner“:
… Scalise’s survival might actually mark a turning point for conservatives and the press. For most of his public life, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has been pilloried by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups because he once spoke to the Council of Conservative Citizens, and because he managed the 1996 Senate campaign that contracted a Duke-connected group for voter contact. Scalise had taken some of the same pummeling, and survived. Why?
“It’s the trump card that they’ve worn out, the race card,” said Perkins. “It’s–anybody who has spoken to any group associated with any group is like that group. And that’s not sustainable. You look at who the president has had at the White House, child molesters who’ve been at functions, who’ve raised money for him–they don’t say the president embraces that. You look at what people had said about Scalise, and I’ll say it, too: I’ve never heard him utter in public or private under a word that could be seen as a racist. Sometimes, you’re invited to speak to unfamiliar groups. Part of the whole deal in politics is persuasion.”
In other words, the GOP has succeeded in defining deviancy down.
John Boehner is keeping his job as Speaker, too, despite what Dana Milbank called “Louie Gohmert’s freak show“. Matt Kibbee at Freedomworks will have a big sad, until he can use this Triumph of the RINOs to gin up another few thousand love gifts from grateful marks small donors. You know it’s a grift because Word Salad Sarah jumped onto the snow machine bandwagon, per Weigel:
Roughly 80 minutes before the new House of Representatives assembled to vote for speaker, Sarah Palin joined the rebellion against John Boehner.
“It’s time for new energy and positive progress in Congress,” the former Alaska governor wrote in (of course) a Facebook post. “Please consider ‘Gunnin’ for Gohmert’ or going ‘Yahoo for Yoho’ when you vote for Speaker of the House today. Both Representatives are true Constitutional, commonsense conservatives who’ve proven to America they keep their promises to We the People. They know they serve America, not the power brokers in DC. “…
Goddess bless Harry Reid, he defies the haterz (& the rogue exercise machines):
************
Apart from keeping a sharp eye on the Repub miscreants (always a sound strategy), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
lamh36
lamh36
‘Selma’ Cinematographer Bradford Young Details Hollywood’s Diversity Problem
Just Some Fuckhead
aka The Washington Branch of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization.
ranchandsyrup
Why does Paul Ryan need dynamic scoring? Because he’s frequently wrong.
lamh36
@lamh36: another good bit from the article:
Elizabelle
Grateful for the Washington DC snowstorm (such as it is) and Transvaginal Bob’s sentencing to keep my mind off Republicans controlling the House AND Senate.
Dog bless Harry Reid. Those look like fighting injuries.
Suspect local DC news is glad not to have to cover Congress too much. One big theme on News Channel 8 is parents’ irritation that Fairfax and Loudoun Counties opened their schools — there’s even a hashtag about FCPS. Or so I’m told.
MattF
Well, of course Perkins want the “race card” to just go away. I suppose he also wishes the “war-on-women card” and the “church-and-state card” would also get out of his way. But it’s not that simple– reality has an unpleasant habit of sticking around whether or not you want it to.
Chyron HR
Jeez, Harry! I know the Democrats took a beating in the midterms, but it was supposed to be a metaphor.
ranchandsyrup
Oh yeah, we took a blogcation but my waifu has a post up about resolutions.
Bubblegum Tate
I just wish Christians could finally get representation in this country. Did you know that they’re really, really oppressed? Go ahead–ask them!
Jay C
BTW, what is Tony Perkins going on about re “child molesters at White House functions”?
Amir Khalid
Some asshole in Scotland abandoned their dog at a railway station with a suitcase containing his things.
dmsilev
Via TPM, this is the best editorial we are likely to read all month, and quite possibly all year.
(also, when reading it, pay careful attention to sequence of first letters of each paragraph)
g
. “Please consider ‘Gunnin’ for Gohmert’
I don’t think that means what she thinks it means.
lamh36
hmmm…
Jim Webb and the White Man’s Burden http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_01/jim_webb_and_the_white_mans_bu053600.php via @washmonthly
As a POC, I just can’t get behind Jim Webb. He is way to comfortable with the use of racial words and sentiments. I’m not saying racist, just racialized ya know what I mean. But sure he could take some white voters form HRC, but no way he gets even usual Dem minority votes with this type of rhetoric.
Ripley
Karl Rove is back in town?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Bubblegum Tate: I did. Wow. Had no idea. I thought that they were the majority and ran everything but it turns out that’s black people instead. The Christians can’t even pray in public without getting beaten up by Muslims and homosexuals, did you know? I sure did not.
lamh36
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
Didn’t the Governator get in trouble once for using an indecent acrostic in one of his letters?
Mike in dc
Well the House Republican majority demographic has to be 100% Christian, 90+% White and 90+% male, does it not?
Clearly a broad cross section of America.
JMV Pyro
@Jay C:
That would be “President of Family Research Council” Tony Perkins, right? He probably means the gays, as his warped mind is still stuck in 1950’s propaganda videos.
ranchandsyrup
@Amir Khalid: He didn’t get in trouble for it, but he did it.
Calouste
@Jay C: The Age of Consent is 18 in the following 12 states:
Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin
Technically, that’s a heck of a lot of “child molesters” there.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Amir Khalid: I saw that this morning. There is nothing more heartbreaking than an abandoned dog. They know exactly what has happened to them. This one sure did.
Just Some Fuckhead
@lamh36: The overwhelming majority of lower class white voters are ignorant racists, or at the very least hold views of white supremacy. This affectation is all they’ve got, otherwise they are the bottom feeders in our noble experiment. Because there are so many of them in America, invariably some Democrat thinks they can harness them but these voters don’t have one boilerplate political philosophy to appeal to other than one of resentment. So that’s the sorta thing you have to appeal to.
Jeffro
Hey check this out: informing the public about CEO’s REAL pay is just like slut-shaming:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/fox-news-kennedy-slut-shaming-companies
No, Kennedy, it’s actually just “shaming” and your attempts at false equivalence to real slut-shaming only work on feebs who watch Faux…
shelley
@Jay C: My thoughts exactly. Who the hell was this? An actual name? Don’t be silly: Repubs don’t do details.
SRW1
Delaying things until the last moment is the normal way when you have to schlepp yourself to a task your heart’s not really in any more.
Is poor Sarah getting bored again and about to do some more quittin?
SRW1
@Jeffro:
Well, there occasionally are whiffs of obscenity when that topic comes up. It’s just that the lady at Fox is somewhat confused about what causes that sentiment.
trollhattan
@lamh36:
I like Gillibrand. Don’t know from here on the opposite coast whether she has a potential future in higher office, but always enjoy seeing her on my teevee machine. Very smart and seems to have a solid and decent core.
lamh36
So Bomb in front of NAACP ofc and doesn’t warrant any on air news coverage? Carry on American media, carry on…SMDH!
The Fat Kate Middleton
@dmsilev: Oh my. Yes. Funniest and best editorial ever.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@dmsilev: Forgot to mention: Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter
MaryRC
@g: I was going to say! Has she been using this idiom all her life without ever realising that it means “hunting someone down so that you can shoot them”?
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: He strikes me as fairly misogynist too. Have you seen his wife? She looks like his daughter. I don’t think he is going to get much traction in the Dem primaries.